No Arabic abstract
The coupling between ferroelectric and magnetic orders in multiferroic materials and the nature of magnetoelectric (ME) effects are enduring experimental challenges. In this work, we have studied the response of magnetization to ferroelectric switching in thin-film hexagonal YbFeO3, a prototypical improper multiferroic. The bulk ME decoupling and potential domain-wall ME coupling were revealed using x-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD) measurements with in-situ ferroelectric polarization switching. Our Landau theory analysis suggests that the bulk ME-coupled ferroelectric switching path has a higher energy barrier than that of the ME-decoupled path; this extra barrier energy is also too high to be reduced by the magneto-static energy in the process of breaking single magnetic domains into multi-domains. In addition, the reduction of magnetization around the ferroelectric domain walls predicted by the Landau theory may induce the domain-wall ME coupling in which the magnetization is correlated with the density of ferroelectric domain walls. These results provide important experimental evidence and theoretical insights into the rich possibilities of ME couplings in hexagonal ferrites, such as manipulating the magnetic states by an electric field.
Magnetic, dielectric and calorimetric studies on 0.9BiFeO3-0.1BaTiO3 indicate strong magnetoelectric coupling. XRD studies reveal a very remarkable change in the rhombohedral distortion angle and a significant shift in the atomic positions at the magnetic Tc due to an isostructural phase transition. The calculated polarization using Rietveld refined atomic positions scales linearly with magnetization. Our results provide the first unambiguous evidence for magnetoelectric coupling of intrinsic multiferroic origin in a BiFeO3 based system.
The magnetic interaction between rare-earth and Fe ions in hexagonal rare-earth ferrites (h-REFeO3), may amplify the weak ferromagnetic moment on Fe, making these materials more appealing as multiferroics. To elucidate the interaction strength between the rare-earth and Fe ions as well as the magnetic moment of the rare-earth ions, element specific magnetic characterization is needed. Using X-ray magnetic circular dichroism, we have studied the ferrimagnetism in h-YbFeO3 by measuring the magnetization of Fe and Yb separately. The results directly show anti-alignment of magnetization of Yb and Fe ions in h-YbFeO3 at low temperature, with an exchange field on Yb of about 17 kOe. The magnetic moment of Yb is about 1.6 muB at low-temperature, significantly reduced compared with the 4.5 muB moment of a free Yb3+. In addition, the saturation magnetization of Fe in h-YbFeO3 has a sizable enhancement compared with that in h-LuFeO3. These findings directly demonstrate that ferrimagnetic order exists in h-YbFeO3; they also account for the enhancement of magnetization and the reduction of coercivity in h-YbFeO3 compared with those in h-LuFeO3 at low temperature, suggesting an important role for the rare-earth ions in tuning the multiferroic properties of h-REFeO3.
We show that misfit strain originated from the film-substrate lattice mismatch strongly increases the value of the quadratic magnetoelectric coupling. The giant magnetoelectric coupling, size effects and misfit strain cause strong changes of ferroic films phase diagrams at zero external magnetic and electric fields, in particular, the transformation of antiferromagnetic phase into ferromagnetic or ferrimagnetic ones for compressive or tensile misfit strains correspondingly as well as thickness induced paramagnetic or/and paraelectric phases appearance. Ferromagnetism appearance and magnetoelectric coupling increase in thin ferroelectric-antiferromagnetic films is in agreement with available experimental data and opens the way for tailoring of ferroic films magnetic and electric properties.
Axion insulator is an exotic magnetic topological insulator with zero Chern number but a nonzero quantized Chern-Simons magnetoelectric coupling. A conclusive experimental evidence for axion insulators is still lacking due to the small signal of topological magnetoelectric effect (TME). Here we show that the dynamical magnetoelectric coupling can be induced by the emph{out-of-plane} surface magnetization dynamics in axion insulator thin films, which further generates a polarization current in the presence of an external magnetic field in the same direction. Such a current is finite in the bulk and increases as the film thickness $d$ decreases, in opposite to TME current which decreases as $d$ decreases. Remarkably, the current in thin films at magnetic resonance is at least ten times larger than that of TME, and thus may serve as a smoking gun signature for axion insulators.
Ultrasonic velocity measurements on the magnetoelectric multiferroic compound CuFeO2 reveal that the antiferromagnetic transition observed at TN1 = 14 K might be induced by an R-3m -> C2/m pseudoproper ferroelastic transition (G. Quirion, M. J. Tagore, M. L. Plumer, O. A. Petrenko, Phys. Rev. B 77, 094111 (2008)). In that case, the group theory states that the order parameter associated with the structural transition must belong to a two dimensional irreducible representation Eg (x^2 - y^2, xy). Since this type of transition can be driven by a Raman Eg mode, we performed Raman scattering measurements on CuFeO2 between 5 K and 290 K. Considering that the isostructural multiferroic compound CuCrO2 might show similar structural deformations at the antiferromagnetic transition TN1 = 24.3 K, Raman measurements have also been performed for comparison. At ambient temperature, the Raman modes in CuFeO2 are observed at omega_Eg = 352 cm^-1 and omega_Ag = 692 cm^-1, while these modes are detected at omega_E_g = 457 cm^-1 and omega_Ag = 709 cm^-1 in CuCrO2. The analysis of the temperature dependence of modes shows that the frequency of all modes increases down to 5 K. This typical behavior can be attributed to anharmonic phonon-phonon interactions. These results clearly indicate that none of the Raman active modes observed in CuFeO2 and CuCrO2 drive the pseudoproper ferroelastic transition observed at the Neel temperature TN1. Finally, a broad band at about 550 cm^-1 observed in the magnetoelectric phase of CuCrO2 below TN2 could be attributed to a magnon mode.