Tuning Néel temperature and anisotropy of magnetoelectric Cr₂O₃ for enhanced performance in voltage-controlled spintronic devices

Electric control of magnetization through the magnetoelectric effect has received considerable attention as a promising route for next-generation low-energy magnetic recording devices. This work is an effort to realize such spintronic devices by voltage-control of the magnetoelectric α-Cr₂O₃. The electrically switchable boundary magnetization of Cr₂O₃ can be used to voltage-control the magnetic states of an adjacent ferromagnet. For this technique to be implemented into a spintronic device, the Néel temperature of Cr₂O₃ must be increased above the bulk value of T_N=307K. Previously, boron doped Cr₂O₃ thin films were fabricated via PLD showing boundary magnetization at elevated temperatures via magnetometry and spin polarized inverse photoemission spectroscopy (SPIPES). In this work, we investigate the influence of boron doping of Cr₂O₃ on the temperature dependence of exchange bias and the consequences it has on the blocking temperature of these exchange-coupled thin film systems.