Progress in electric field control of magnetism: Materials, mechanisms, and devices

Using the spin degree of freedom to realize the information storage and processing is a promising way to overcome the challenges of high chip heat loss and quantum size effect in classic semiconductor devices of nanoscale, which has developed to be a hot research area of spintronics. The manipulation of magnetism is one of the core topics in the field of spintronics. Various routes have been developed to control the magnetism, such as magnet, strain, chemical doping, current, and light. With the advantages of reversibility, low-energy consumption, and good compatibility with semiconductor industry, manipulation of magnetism using an electric field attracts increasing research interest and shows enormous potential for application. Actually, the possibility of tuning the magnetism by an electrical way was firstly proposed by the Maxwell’s equation and the thought of the electric field control of magnetism could date back to the 1960s. After the experimental realization of the electric field control of magnetism in diluted magnetic semiconductor (In,Mn)As by Ohno et al. in 2000, such a technology has been utilized to manipulate the magnetic properties of different magnetic metals, oxides, topological insulators, and two-dimensional materials. The physical mechanisms behind the electric field control of magnetism also attract a lot of attention. In this review, we summarize the recent progress of electric field control of magnetism in different materials and devices based on their mechanisms: Carrier-density, strain, exchange coupling, orbital reconstruction, and ion migration. Various magnetic properties, like Curie temperature, magnetic moment, magnetic anisotropy, coercivity, and exchange bias have been effectively modulated by the electric field. Among them, the electric field controls of magnetic anisotropy, coercivity, and exchange bias are thought to be promising routes for magnetization switching based on the pure electric field. Meanwhile, the electric field is also used to control the different magnetoresistance and spin-related transport properties. The spin transfer torque and spin orbit torque are two kinds of torques that are generated by electrical current and can be utilized to switch the magnetization. Using an electric field to control these two torques attracts more and more attention. On the other hand, a lot of efforts have been made to control spintronic devices like magnetic tunnel junction, multi-ferroic tunnel junction, and racetrack memory by the electric field for pursuing the next generation nonvolatile memory technologies with low energy consumption, high density, and high speed. A large number of researches have been done in the area of electric field control of magnetism, whereas, it is still a developing topic with a lot of open questions in the performances, mechanisms, and practical applications. More efforts need to be done in the area of electric field control of magnetism, to reveal the coupling between various mechanisms, to increase the working temperature of more and more spintronic devices to or beyond room temperature, to realize the electric field control of magnetism in low dimensional magnetic systems, magnetic nanostructures, antiferromagnet, and magnetic insulator, to switch the magnetization using much lower or even no current density with the assistance of electric field at room temperature and clarify the corresponding dynamic process, and to apply the electric field control of magnetism in neurocomputing and logical operation.