Ferroelectric strain modulation of antiferromagnetic moments in Ni/NiO ferromagnet/antiferromagnet heterostructures

Electric field manipulation of magnetic properties has attracted a lot of research interest recently in solid-state physics. However, ferroelectric strain modulation of antiferromagnetic (AFM) layer is rarely studied in ferromagnet/antiferromagnet/ferroelectric heterostructures. In this paper, we prepared a Ni/NiO(001) heterostructure on ferroelectric Pb⁢(M⁢g_1/3⁢N⁢b_2/3)_0.7⁢T⁢i_0.3⁢O_3⁡(001) substrates and observed an out-of-plane electric field modulation of exchange bias and magnetic anisotropy in the Ni layer. The exchange bias was easily eliminated by an electric field cycle, which was due to the AFM domain switching induced by piezoelectric strain in the NiO layer. Synchrotron x ray linear dichroism results confirmed the AFM moment alignment induced by ferroelectric strain as well. Our work showed a promising strategy to manipulate AFM moments and domains, serving the blooming AFM spintronics.