Multiferroic heterostructures and tunneling junctions

Multiferroic heterostructures showing both electric and magnetic orders have attracted much attention because of their promising applications in the next generation of memories, sensors, and microwave devices and so on. The complex electronic and magnetic orders at the interface in multiferroic heterostructures will cause abundant physical phenomena due to the interplay among spin, charge, orbit, and lattice degrees of freedom, and various prototype devices have been achieved. In this review, we summarize some recent progresses mainly in the strain- and charge-mediated effects on the magnetic and electronic transport properties manipulated by electric/magnetic fields in multiferroic heterostructures. The recent advances in multiferroic tunnel junctions with ferroelectric barriers by using the spin polarized nature of magnetic materials are particularly presented, which exhibit magnetoelectric coupling effects at the interface and multi-stable resistance states in a single memory unit cell. Finally, the new inspiration for the design of spintronic devices having more energy efficiency and higher density is discussed.