Integrated Magnetics and Multiferroics for Compact and Power-Efficient Sensing, Memory, Power, RF, and Microwave Electronics

Abstract

The coexistence of electric polarization and magnetization in multiferroic materials provides great opportunities for realizing magnetoelectric (ME) coupling, including electric field control of magnetism, or vice versa, through a strain-mediated ME coupling in layered magnetic/ferroelectric multiferroic heterostructures. Strong ME coupling has been the enabling factor for different multiferroic devices, which, however, has been elusive, particularly at RF/microwave frequencies. In this paper, most recent progress on new integrated multiferroic devices for sensing RF and microwave electronics will be presented, including novel RF Nano-electro-mechanical systems ME resonators with picotesla sensitivity for dc magnetic fields and novel gigahertz magnetic and multiferroic integrated inductors with a wide operation frequency range of 0.3∼3 GHz, a high quality factor close to 20, and a voltage tunable inductance of 50%∼150 %. At the same time, we will also demonstrate other tunable RF devices, including integrated non-reciprocal tunable bandpass filter with ultrawideband isolation more than 13 dB. These novel magnetics and multiferroic devices show great promise for applications, such as compact, lightweight, and power-efficient sensing, memory, RF, and microwave integrated electronics.