Eur. Phys. J. Appl. Phys. (2015) 70: 30303
https://doi.org/10.1051/epjap/2015150129

Magneto-electric effect for multiferroic thin film by Monte Carlo simulation^*

Department of Physics, University of Auckland, Auckland 1010, New Zealand

^a e-mail: Zidong.Wang@auckland.ac.nz

Received: 27 February 2015
Revised: 15 May 2015
Accepted: 20 May 2015
Published online: 24 June 2015

Abstract

Magneto-electric (ME) effect in a multiferroic heterostructure film, i.e., a coupled ferromagnetic-ferroelectric thin film, has been investigated through the use of the Metropolis algorithm in Monte Carlo simulations. A classical Heisenberg model describes the energy stored in the ferromagnetic (FM) film, and we use a pseudo-spin model with a transverse Ising Hamiltonian to characterise the energy of electric dipoles in the ferroelectric (FE) film. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate the dynamic response of polarisation is driven by an external magnetic field, when there is a linear magneto-electric coupling at the interface between the ferromagnetic and ferroelectric components.