• Ramesh, Vidya
• Danilkin, Sergey A.
• Cheung, Jeffery
• Valanoor, Nagarajan
• Maran, Ronald
• Callori, Sara J.
• Lee, Wai Tung
• Seidel, Jan
• Ulrich, Clemens
• Hu, Songbai
• Bertinshaw, Joel

Abstract

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>Magnonic devices that utilize electric control of spin waves mediated by complex spin textures are an emerging direction in spintronics research. Room-temperature multiferroic materials, such as bismuth ferrite (BiFeO<jats:sub>3</jats:sub>), would be ideal candidates for this purpose. To realize magnonic devices, a robust long-range spin cycloid with well-known direction is desired, since it is a prerequisite for the magnetoelectric coupling. Despite extensive investigation, the stabilization of a large-scale uniform spin cycloid in nanoscale (100 nm) thin BiFeO<jats:sub>3</jats:sub> films has not been accomplished. Here, we demonstrate cycloidal spin order in 100 nm BiFeO<jats:sub>3</jats:sub> thin films through the careful choice of crystallographic orientation, and control of the electrostatic and strain boundary conditions. Neutron diffraction, in conjunction with X-ray diffraction, reveals an incommensurate spin cycloid with a unique [11"Equation missing"<!-- image only, no MathML or LaTex -->] propagation direction. While this direction is different from bulk BiFeO<jats:sub>3</jats:sub>, the cycloid length and Néel temperature remain equivalent to bulk at room temperature.</jats:p>

Topics

• impedance spectroscopy
• x-ray diffraction
• thin film
• neutron diffraction
• texture
• Bismuth