Giant strain control of magnetoelectric effect in Ta|Fe|MgO

The exploration of electric field controlled magnetism has come under scrutiny for its intriguing magnetoelectric phenomenon as well as technological advances in spintronics. Herein, the tremendous effect of an epitaxial strain on voltage-controlled perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (VPMA) is demonstrated in a transition-metal|ferromagnet|MgO (TM|FM|MgO) heterostructure from first-principles electronic structure computation. By tuning the epitaxial strain in Ta|Fe|MgO as a model system of TM|FM|MgO, we find distinctly different behaviours of VPMA from V- to Λ-shape trends with a substantially large magnetoelectric coefficient, up to an order of 10(3) fJV(−1)m(−1). We further reveal that the VPMA modulation under strain is mainly governed by the inherently large spin-orbit coupling of Ta 5d–Fe 3d hybridized orbitals at the TM|FM interface, although the Fe 3d–O 2p hybridization at the FM|MgO interface is partly responsible in determining the PMA of Ta|Fe|MgO. These results suggest that the control of epitaxial strain enables the engineering of VPMA, and provides physical insights for the divergent behaviors of VPMA and magnetoelectric coefficients found in TM|FM|MgO experiments.