Electrical control of magnetic reversal processes in magnetostrictive structures

We demonstrate the interplay between strain-induced, shape-induced, and magnetocrystalline anisotropy energies in a micron scale magnetostrictive device coupled to a piezoelectric transducer. Varying the voltage on the transducer tunes the shape of the magnetic hysteresis loops and the magnetic reversal processes, which involve a single 180° or 90° domain wall, or proceed via the formation of a regular flux closure domain pattern. The flux closure domains can be suppressed or enhanced in the absence of an external magnetic field by sweeping the applied voltage. The functionalities we demonstrate may find applications in magnetic schemes for information storage and logical processing.