Influence of elastically pinned magnetic domain walls on magnetization reversal in multiferroic heterostructures

摘要

In elastically coupled multiferroic heterostructures that exhibit full domain correlations between ferroelectric and ferromagnetic subsystems, magnetic domain walls are firmly pinned on top of ferroelectric domain boundaries. In this work, we investigate the influence of pinned magnetic domain walls on the magnetization reversal process in a Co_(40)Fe_(40)B_(20) wedge film that is coupled to a ferroelectric BaTiO_3 substrate via interface strain transfer. We show that the magnetic field direction can be used to select between two distinct magnetization reversal mechanisms, namely, (1) double switching events involving alternate stripe domains at a time or (2) synchronized switching of all domains. Furthermore, scaling of the switching fields with domain width and film thickness is also found to depend on the field orientation. These results are explained by considering the dissimilar energies of the two types of pinned magnetic domain walls that are formed in the system.