Electrical control of magnetism in oxides

Recent progress in the electrical control of magnetism in oxides, with profound physics and enormous potential applications, is reviewed and illustrated. In the first part, we provide a comprehensive summary of the electrical control of magnetism in the classic multiferroic heterostructures and clarify the various mechanisms lying behind them. The second part focuses on the novel technique of electric double layer gating for driving a significant electronic phase transition in magnetic oxides by a small voltage. In the third part, electric field applied on ordinary dielectric oxide is used to control the magnetic phenomenon originating from charge transfer and orbital reconstruction at the interface between dissimilar correlated oxides. At the end, we analyze the challenges in electrical control of magnetism in oxides, both the mechanisms and practical applications, which will inspire more in-depth research and advance the development in this field. (topical review)