Furukawa Tetsuya, Shimokawa Yuri, Kobayashi Kaya, Itou Tetsuaki
Department of Applied Physics, Tokyo University of Science, 6-3-1 Niijyuku, Katsushika-ku, Tokyo, 125-8585, Japan.
Research Institute for Interdisciplinary Science, Okayama University, 3-1-1 Tsushimanaka, Kita-ku, Okayama, 700-8530, Japan.
Nat Commun. 2017 Oct 16;8(1):954. doi: 10.1038/s41467-017-01093-3.
The magnetoelectric effect in bulk matter is of growing interest both fundamentally and technologically. Since the beginning of the century, the magnetoelectric effect has been studied intensively in multiferroic materials. However, magnetoelectric phenomena in materials without any (anti-)ferroic order remain almost unexplored. Here we show the observation of a new class of bulk magnetoelectric effect, by revisiting elemental trigonal tellurium. We demonstrate that elemental tellurium, which is a nonmagnetic semiconductor, exhibits current-induced magnetization. This effect is attributed to spin splitting of the bulk band owing to the lack of inversion symmetry in trigonal tellurium. This finding highlights magnetoelectricity in bulk matter driven by moving electrons without any (anti-)ferroic order. Notably, current-induced magnetization generates a magnetic field that is not circular around but is parallel to the applied current; thus, this phenomenon opens a new area of magnetic field generation beyond Ampere's law that may lead to industrial applications.Electrical control of magnetic response in bulk material without electric or magnetic order is rare and potentially attractive for high efficient spintronics. Here, the authors report magnetization in elemental tellurium driven purely by current without any (anti-)ferroic order.
块状物质中的磁电效应在基础研究和技术应用方面都越来越受到关注。自本世纪初以来，多铁性材料中的磁电效应就一直受到深入研究。然而，在没有任何（反）铁电序的材料中的磁电现象几乎仍未被探索。在此，我们通过重新研究元素三角碲，展示了对一类新型块状磁电效应的观察。我们证明，作为一种非磁性半导体的元素碲表现出电流感应磁化。这种效应归因于三角碲中缺乏反演对称性导致的体带自旋分裂。这一发现突出了在没有任何（反）铁电序的情况下由移动电子驱动的块状物质中的磁电效应。值得注意的是，电流感应磁化产生的磁场不是围绕而是平行于外加电流；因此，这一现象开辟了一个超越安培定律的磁场产生新领域，可能会带来工业应用。在没有电序或磁序的块状材料中对磁响应进行电控制是罕见的，并且对高效自旋电子学具有潜在吸引力。在此，作者报道了在元素碲中纯粹由电流驱动且没有任何（反）铁电序的磁化现象。
