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Solar manipulations of perpendicular magnetic anisotropy for flexible spintronics

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Abstract

Flexible electronics/spintronics attracts researchers’ attention for their application potential abroad in wearable devices, healthcare, and other areas. Those devices’ performance (speed, energy consumption) is highly dependent on manipulating information bits (spin-orientation in flexible spintronics). In this work, we established an organic photovoltaic (OPV)/ ZnO/Pt/Co/Pt heterostructure on flexible PET substrates with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA). Under sunlight illumination, the photo-electrons generated from the OPV layer transfer into the PMA heterostructure, then they reduce the PMA strength by enhancing the interfacial Rashba field accordingly. The coercive field (Hc) reduces from 800 Oe to 500 Oe at its maximum, and the magnetization can be switched up and down reversibly. The stability of sunlight control of magnetization reversal under various bending conditions is also tested for flexible spintronic applications. Lastly, the voltage output of sunlight-driven PMA is achieved in our prototype device, exhibiting an excellent angular dependence and opening a door towards solar-driven flexible spintronics with much lower energy consumption.

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Acknowledgements

The work was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (Grant No. 2022YFB3203903), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 52172126 and 62001366), and the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Grant No. 2022M722509).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory for Manufacturing Systems Engineering, Electronic Materials Research Laboratory, Key Laboratory of the Ministry of Education & International Center for Dielectric Research, School of Electronic Science and Engineering, The International Joint Laboratory for Micro/Nano Manufacturing and Measurement Technology, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, 710049, China

    Zhexi He, Yifan Zhao, Yujing Du, Meng Zhao, Yuxuan Jiang & Ming Liu

  2. School of Materials Science & Engineering, Changzhou University, Changzhou, 213164, China

    Ziyao Zhou

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  1. Zhexi He
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  2. Yifan Zhao
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  4. Meng Zhao
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  6. Ming Liu
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Correspondence to Yifan Zhao, Ming Liu or Ziyao Zhou.

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He, Z., Zhao, Y., Du, Y. et al. Solar manipulations of perpendicular magnetic anisotropy for flexible spintronics. Front. Phys. 19, 43206 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11467-023-1377-0

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