Theory Department
Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics
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Gerhard, L., Yamada, T. K., Balashov, T., Takácz, A. F., Wesselink, R. J. H., Däne, M., Fechner, M., Ostanin, S. A., Ernst, A., Mertig, I., Wulfhekel, W.

Electrical control of the magnetic state of Fe
IEEE Transactions on Magnetics 47, (6),pp 1619-1622 (2011)
Magneto-electric coupling offers a new pathway to information storage in magnetic memory devices. The phenomenon has been observed in various materials ranging from insulators to semiconductors. In bulk metallic systems, magneto-electric coupling has been disregarded as the electric field cannot enter bulk metals. In this work, we show that a substantial magneto-electric coupling exists in metallic Fe nano-islands grown on Cu(111). Using the electric field in the tunnel junction of a scanning tunneling microscope, the magnetic order parameter and the crystal structure of Fe was changed on the nanometer scale. This allows high density nonvolatile information storage by means of magneto-electric coupling in a simple metallic system.

TH-2011-18