Coengineering of ferroelectric and exchange bias properties in BiFeO3 based heterostructures

The magnetoelectric coupling existing in some multiferroics may allow the low-power electrical control of spintronics devices. However, room temperature magnetoelectric multiferroics are extremely rare, an exception being BiFeO3, a ferroelectric antiferromagnet. To be used for electrically controllable spintronics, BiFeO3 has to be coupled with a ferromagnetic material through an interfacial exchange interaction, and carefully engineered to show minimum leakage. Here, we propose a Mn doped/undoped bilayer strategy that allows obtaining large exchange bias as well as low leakage. This is an important step toward the manipulation of a magnetization by an electric field in a vertical geometry.