Voltage Control of Magnetism Enabled by Resistive Switching*

Application of a strong electric stimulus, voltage or current, to ferromagnetic (FM) oxide (La,Sr)MnO₃ (LSMO) triggers the metal-insulator transition producing a low- to high-state resistive switching. This switching occurs by the nucleation and growth of an insulating paramagnetic (PM) barrier perpendicular to the current flow, in contrast to conventional filamentary percolation parallel to the current. The voltage-induced barrier formation results in an unusual FM/PM/FM configuration leading to a dramatic change of magnetic anisotropy. Before the PM barrier nucleation, the devices have an easy-plane anisotropy showing nearly square hysteresis loops in any in-plane direction. After the barrier nucleation, the direction perpendicular to the barrier becomes the hard anisotropy axis, which is evidenced by the complete suppression of the remanence and coercivity and the strong enhancement of the saturation fields in the hysteresis loops. Our work shows that employing resistive switching is a viable strategy to achieve voltage-controlled magnetism.