Switching on superferromagnetism

Abstract

Electric-field control of magnetism has emerged as a potential approach for low-power consumption spintronics. Although recent results in multiferroic systems have shown the possibility to manipulate the magnetic state of magnetic materials deposited on ferroelectric substrates by means of electric fields, the resulting magnetic state is multidomain in nature. For real multiferroic devices to become a true single magnetic domain state, lower dimensionality is required. In this work, the authors show, for an assemble of iron nanograins deposited on top of a BaTiO${}_{3}$ substrate, that an electric field-induced strain is capable of switching on a collective long-range ferromagnetic order (superferromagnetism) on an otherwise zero-dimensional superparamagnetic nanoparticle system. The effect, observed slightly above room temperature, holds promise for the implementation of nanoscale multiferroic systems in spin-based storage and logic architectures operating at ambient conditions.