Publication Type
Journal
Journal Name
IEEE Transactions on Magnetics
Publication Date
Page Numbers
1619 to 1622
Volume
47
Issue
6
Abstract
Magneto-electric coupling offers a new pathway to information storage in magnetic memory devices. This phenomenon has been observed
in various materials ranging from insulators to semiconductors. In bulk metallic systems, magneto-electric coupling has been
disregarded as the electric field cannot enter bulk metals. In this work, we show that a substantial magneto-electric coupling exists
in metallic Fe nano-islands grown on Cu(111). Using the electric field in the tunnel junction of a scanning tunneling microscope, the
magnetic order parameter and the crystal structure of Fe was changed on the nanometer scale. This allows high density nonvolatile
information storage by means of magneto-electric coupling in a simple metallic system.