Tunable Magnetoelectric Nonvolatile Memory Devices Based on SmFeO 3 /P(VDF-TrFE) Nanocomposite Films Anju Ahlawat,* ,† S. Satapathy,* ,†,‡ Mandar M. Shirolkar, §,∥ Jieni Li, ∥ Azam Ali Khan, Pratik Deshmukh, † Haiqian Wang, ∥ R. J. Choudhary, ⊥ and A. K. Karnal †,‡ † Laser Materials Section, Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology, Indore 452013, India ‡ Homi Bhabha National Institute, Training School Complex, Anushakti Nagar, Mumbai-400094, India § Department of Physics, Tamkang University, Tamsui, 251, Taiwan ∥ Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026, China ⊥ UGC DAE, Consortium for Scientific Research, Indore 452001, India * S Supporting Information ABSTRACT: Utilization of magnetoelectric effects in multi- ferroic materials hold great potential to fabricate nonvolatile memory devices with outstanding characteristics. In particular, organic thin memories are favorable because of their environment friendly nature, mechanical flexibility, and low fabrication cost. In this work, we have demonstrated a room temperature paradigm two level nonvolatile memory oper- ation by exploiting the nonlinear magnetoelectric effects in flexible SmFeO 3 /P(VDF-TrFE) nanocomposite films using organic ferroelectric polymer (P(VDF-TrFE)) as a host matrix. Strong strain mediated interfacial interactions between ferromagnetic and ferroelectric phases in SmFeO 3 /P(VDF- TrFE) nanocomposite films allow electric field controlled magnetic switching. The maximum magnetoelectric coefficient (α) obtained is 45 mV cm −1 Oe 1− at H bias = 1 kOe and 16 mV cm −1 Oe 1− at H bias = 0 in electrically poled composite films (30% SmFeO 3 ). The experiments demonstrate that during seven operative cycles for 1500 s, the applied positive and negative electric fields can repeatedly switch states of α. Binary information is stored by using the states of α, rather than resistance, magnetization, and electric polarization, which is advantageous to overcome the drawback of destructive reading of polarization of ferroelectric random access memory. The magnetoelectric response and the required voltage for switching of α can be tuned by varying the magnetic phase fraction (SmFeO 3 nanoparticles) in nanocomposite films. Hence, the kind of nonvolatile memory using organic, flexible magnetoelectric SmFeO 3 /P(VDF-TrFE) nanocomposite films has excellent practical characteristics, that is, compactness, easy and fast speed reading/writing operation, and reduced power consumption. KEYWORDS: nonvolatile memory, multiferroics, P(VDF-TrFE), SmFeO 3 , nanocomposite films, magnetic ordering, electric poling, magneteoelectric coupling ■ INTRODUCTION The modern generation of data storage technology demands for low power consuming high performance memory storage devices. In past few decades, volatile and nonvolatile memories have been well explored 1−6 The typically used fast speed memory storage devices (dynamic and static random access memory etc.) suffer from many disadvantages during the operation. For example, they consume high power due to leakage and their volatile nature results in loss of data after removal of power supply. 7−10 In contrast, nonvolatile memories can store information in the absence of power supply and hence they are promising for durable and persistent storage. 11 However, in spite of having lower energy consumption, the conventional nonvolatile memories (mag- netic random access memory (MRAM) and ferroelectric random access memory (FRAM)) are facing certain challenging hurdles to become mainstream in industry. 12 For instance, FRAM devices suffer from their limited storage density and destructive read operations. 13 In this respect, artificial multiferroic composites based on ferromagnetic (FM) and ferroelectric (FE) phases that exhibit strong magneto- electric (ME) coupling, hold promise for designing new generation memory devices with several advantages. 14 Non- volatile memory devices based on multiferroic composites offer innovative approaches rather than semiconductor transistor- based devices. In the past decade, various nonvolatile Received: March 12, 2018 Accepted: July 5, 2018 Article www.acsanm.org Cite This: ACS Appl. Nano Mater. XXXX, XXX, XXX-XXX © XXXX American Chemical Society A DOI: 10.1021/acsanm.8b00401 ACS Appl. Nano Mater. XXXX, XXX, XXX−XXX Downloaded via 185.250.43.182 on July 18, 2018 at 18:24:44 (UTC). See https://pubs.acs.org/sharingguidelines for options on how to legitimately share published articles.