Tuning magnetic spirals beyond room temperature with chemical disorder.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 27982127.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/ncomms13758 and PMC identifier 5171853.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
In the past years, magnetism-driven ferroelectricity and gigantic magnetoelectric effects have been reported for a number of frustrated magnets featuring ordered spiral magnetic phases. Such materials are of high-current interest due to their potential for spintronics and low-power magnetoelectric devices. However, their low-magnetic ordering temperatures (typically <100 K) greatly restrict their fields of application. Here we demonstrate that the onset temperature of the spiral phase in the perovskite YBaCuFeO<sub>5</sub> can be increased by more than 150 K through a controlled manipulation of the Fe/Cu chemical disorder. Moreover, we show that this novel mechanism can stabilize the magnetic spiral state of YBaCuFeO<sub>5</sub> above the symbolic value of 25 °C at zero magnetic field. Our findings demonstrate that the properties of magnetic spirals, including its wavelength and stability range, can be engineered through the control of chemical disorder, offering a great potential for the design of materials with magnetoelectric properties beyond room temperature.