Room-temperature polarization switching and antiferromagnetic coupling in epitaxial (Ga,Fe)2O3/SrRuO3 heterostructures

Abstract

Room-temperature reversible remnant polarization of gallium ferrite thin-films is reported as a multiferroic material with non-zero order parameters of polarization and magnetization. With the addition of Fe ions in Ga sites, Ga0.6Fe1.4O3 (GFO) thin films have been considered as potentially promising of multiferroicity. The b-axis oriented epitaxial GFO films were grown on SrRuO3(111)/SrTiO3(111). The six-fold symmetric in-plane epitaxy of the GFO films was confirmed using X-ray diffraction. The magnetic moment of the films was measured as a function of temperature and external magnetic field, which shows a room-temperature non-zero magnetization. Macroscopic and microscopic methods have been applied to demonstrate the polarization switching of the films. The remnant polarization is measured as 0.05 μC/cm2. Reduction of leaky behaviors of the GFO films owing to the conducting oxide of SrRuO3 will pave a way to take advantage of the room-temperature non-zero multi-orders for future non-volatile memory device applications. © 2015 AIP Publishing LLC.