Physikalisches Institut, Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT), Wolfgang-Gaede-Strasse 1, 76131 Karlsruhe, Germany.
Nat Nanotechnol. 2010 Nov;5(11):792-7. doi: 10.1038/nnano.2010.214. Epub 2010 Oct 31.
Magnetoelectric coupling allows the magnetic state of a material to be changed by an applied electric field. To date, this phenomenon has mainly been observed in insulating materials such as complex multiferroic oxides. Bulk metallic systems do not exhibit magnetoelectric coupling, because applied electric fields are screened by conduction electrons. We demonstrate strong magnetoelectric coupling at the surface of thin iron films using the electric field from a scanning tunnelling microscope, and are able to write, store and read information to areas with sides of a few nanometres. Our work demonstrates that high-density, non-volatile information storage is possible in metals.
磁电耦合使得材料的磁状态可以通过外加电场来改变。迄今为止，这种现象主要在诸如复杂的多铁氧化物等绝缘材料中观察到。由于外加电场被传导电子屏蔽，块状金属系统不表现出磁电耦合。我们使用扫描隧道显微镜的电场在铁薄膜的表面演示了强磁电耦合，并能够在几个纳米边长的区域写入、存储和读取信息。我们的工作表明，高密度、非易失性信息存储在金属中是可行的。
