Voltage induced artificial ferromagnetic-antiferromagnetic ordering in synthetic multiferroics

This paper presents numerical and experimental data for dipole-dipole coupled Ni nanodots on a piezoelectric [Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O-3](0.68)[PbTiO3](0.32) substrate. Simulation results show that the dipole coupling produces artificial ferromagnetic (parallel magnetization alignment in the nanodot arrays) behavior that can be modified to artificial antiferromagnetic behavior with an applied voltage. Experimental results show the trends in M-r and H-c predicted by the model, but discrepancies arise due to geometric defects present in the fabricated samples. Geometric defects are introduced into the Ni nanodot models, thus dramatically improving the correlation between experiments and analysis. This work shows, through numerical simulations, that artificial multiferroic nanostructures can be designed to produce switching from parallel (artificial ferromagnetic) to antiparallel (artificial antiferromagnetic) magnetization ordering by leveraging dipole coupling with voltage induced changes in magnetic anisotropy. Published by AIP Publishing.