Manipulating magnetoelectric energy landscape in multiferroics.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 32504063.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-020-16727-2 and PMC identifier 7275047.
- 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
Magnetoelectric coupling at room temperature in multiferroic materials, such as BiFeO<sub>3</sub>, is one of the leading candidates to develop low-power spintronics and emerging memory technologies. Although extensive research activity has been devoted recently to exploring the physical properties, especially focusing on ferroelectricity and antiferromagnetism in chemically modified BiFeO<sub>3</sub>, a concrete understanding of the magnetoelectric coupling is yet to be fulfilled. We have discovered that La substitutions at the Bi-site lead to a progressive increase in the degeneracy of the potential energy landscape of the BiFeO<sub>3</sub> system exemplified by a rotation of the polar axis away from the 〈111〉<sub>pc</sub> towards the 〈112〉<sub>pc</sub> discretion. This is accompanied by corresponding rotation of the antiferromagnetic axis as well, thus maintaining the right-handed vectorial relationship between ferroelectric polarization, antiferromagnetic vector and the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya vector. As a consequence, La-BiFeO<sub>3</sub> films exhibit a magnetoelectric coupling that is distinctly different from the undoped BiFeO<sub>3</sub> films.