Magneto-ionics has emerged as a promising approach to manipulate magnetic properties, not only by drastically reducing power consumption associated with electric current based devices but also by enabling novel functionalities. To date, magneto-ionics have been mostly explored in oxygen-based systems, while there is a surge of interests in alternative ionic systems. Here we demonstrate highly effective hydroxide-based magneto-ionics in electrodeposited α-Co(OH)2 films. The α-Co(OH)2, which is a room temperature paramagnet, is switched to ferromagnetic after electrolyte gating with a negative voltage. The system is fully, magnetically reversible upon positive voltage application. The origin of the reversible paramagnetic-to-ferromagnetic transition is attributed to the ionic diffusion of hydroxyl groups, promoting the formation of metallic cobalt ferromagnetic regions. Our findings demonstrate one of the lowest turn-on voltages reported for propylene carbonate gated experiments. By tuning the voltage magnitude and sample area we demonstrate that the speed of the induced ionic effect can be drastically enhanced.
@article{arxiv.2211.01191,
title = {Hydroxide-based magneto-ionics: electric-field control of reversible paramagnetic-to-ferromagnetic switch in ${\alpha}$-Co(OH)$_{2}$ films},
author = {Alberto Quintana and Abigail A. Firme and Christopher J. Jensen and Dongxing Zheng and Chen Liu and Xixiang Zhang and Kai Liu},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2211.01191},
year = {2022}
}