360° deterministic magnetization rotation in a three-ellipse magnetoelectric heterostructure

Abstract

A magnetic dipole-coupled magnetoelectric heterostructure comprised of three closely spaced ellipse shapes was designed and shown to be capable of achieving deterministic in-plane magnetization rotation. The design approach used a combination of conventional micromagnetic simulations to obtain preliminary configurations followed by simulations using a fully strain-coupled, time domain micromagnetic code for a detailed assessment of performance. The conventional micromagnetic code has short run times and was used to refine the ellipse shape and orientation, but it does not accurately capture the effects of the strain gradients present in the piezoelectric and magnetostrictive layers that contribute to magnetization reorientation. The fully coupled code was used to assess the effects of strain and magnetic field gradients on precessional switching in the side ellipses and on the resulting dipole-field driven magnetization reorientation in the center ellipse. The work led to a geometry with a CoFeB ellipse (125 nm × 95 nm × 4 nm) positioned between two smaller CoFeB ellipses (75 nm × 50 nm × 4 nm) on a 500 nm PZT-5H film substrate clamped at its bottom surface. The smaller ellipses were oriented at 45° and positioned at 70° and 250° about the central ellipse due to the film deposition on a thick substrate. A 7.3 V pulse applied to the PZT for 0.22 ns produced 180° switching of the magnetization in the outer ellipses that then drove switching in the center ellipse through dipole-dipole coupling. Full 360° deterministic rotation was achieved with a second pulse. The temporal response of the resulting design is discussed.