Piezostrain tuning non-volatile 90° magnetic easy axis rotation in Co2FeAl Heusler alloy film grown on Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3) O3-PbTiO3 heterostructures

Non-volatile electric field-based control of magnetic anisotropy in Co2FeAl/Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3) O-3-PbTiO3 (CFA/PMN-PT) heterostructures is investigated at room temperature. The remnant magnetization response under different electric fields shows a asymmetric butterfly-like behavior; specifically, this behavior is consistent with the asymmetric butterfly-like piezostrain versus applied electric field curve. Thus electric field-induced non-volatile 90 degrees magnetic easy axis rotation can be attributed to the piezostrain effect. Further, the result measured by rotating-angle ferromagnetic resonance demonstrates piezostrain-mediated non-volatile 90 degrees magnetic easy axis rotation at the initial state and the two remnant polarization states after application of the poling fields of 10 and -10 kV cm(-1) turned off. The angular dependence of magnetic damping also indicates a 90 degrees phase shift at the above mentioned three different states. Additionally, the piezostrain-mediated non-volatile stable magnetization reversal in the two directions of easy and hard magnetization axes are observed under positive and negative pulsed electric fields, which can be used to improve the performance of low-loss multiple-state memory devices.