Thermal effects in magnetoelectric memories with stress-mediated switching

Heterostructures with magneto-electro-elastic coupling (e. g. multiferroics) are of paramount importance for developing new sensors, actuators and memories. With the progressive miniaturization of these systems it is necessary to take into account possible thermal effects, which may influence the normal operating regime. As a paradigmatic example we consider a recently introduced non-volatile memory element composed of a magnetostrictive nanoparticle embedded in a piezoelectric matrix. The distributions of the physical fields in this matrix/inclusion configuration are determined by means of the Eshelby theory, the magnetization dynamics is studied through the Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert formalism, and the statistical mechanics is introduced with the Langevin and Fokker-Planck methodologies. As result of the combination of such techniques we determine the switching time between the states of the memory, the error probability and the energy dissipation of the writing process. They depend on the ratio k(B)T/v where T is the absolute temperature and v is the volume of the magnetoelastic particle.