近日，德国马克斯·普朗克物质结构与动力学研究所A. Cavalleri团队报道了光致非易失性可重写铁轴开关。相关论文于2025年10月9日发表在《科学》杂志上。
铁相的超快切换是一个具有技术潜力的活跃研究领域。然而，一些关键挑战仍然存在，涵盖从铁磁体的有限速度到铁电体中去极化场导致的切换域内在波动性。与这些铁性系统不同，铁轴材料具有保持空间反演和时间反演对称性的双稳态，因此不受去极化场的影响，但也难以用传统方法进行操控。
研究组通过设计一个由圆偏振驱动太赫兹声子模组成的有效轴场来证明光诱导的铁轴序切换。一个切换铁轴域可稳定维持数小时，并可用反旋的第二束太赫兹脉冲反转回来。这项工作所展示的效应有望构建一个稳健的超快信息存储平台。
附：英文原文
Title: Photo-induced nonvolatile rewritable ferroaxial switching
Author: Z. Zeng, M. Frst, M. Fechner, D. Prabhakaran, P. G. Radaelli, A. Cavalleri
Issue&Volume: 2025-10-09
Abstract: Ultrafast switching of ferroic phases is an active research area with technological potential. Yet, some key challenges remain, ranging from limited speeds in ferromagnets to intrinsic volatility of switched domains owing to depolarizing fields in ferroelectrics. Unlike these ferroic systems, ferroaxial materials host bistable states that preserve spatial-inversion and time-reversal symmetry and are therefore immune to depolarizing fields but also difficult to manipulate with conventional methods. We demonstrate photo-induced switching of ferroaxial order by engineering an effective axial field composed of circularly driven terahertz phonon modes. A switched ferroaxial domain remains stable for many hours and can be reversed back with a second terahertz pulse of opposite helicity. The effects demonstrated in this work may lead to the development of a robust platform for ultrafast information storage.
DOI: adz5230