Multiferroics -- making a switch the electric way

		IMAGE: Ramamoorthy Ramesh and Chan-Ho Yang of Berkeley Lab's Materials Sciences Division successfully demonstrated that electric fields can be used as ON/OFF switches in doped multiferroic films, a development that holds... Click here for more information.

BERKELEY, CA – Multiferroics are materials in which unique combinations of electric and magnetic properties can simultaneously coexist. They are potential cornerstones in future magnetic data storage and spintronic devices provided a simple and fast way can be found to turn their electric and magnetic properties on and off. In a promising new development, researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) working with a prototypical multiferroic have successfully demonstrated just such a switch -- electric fields.