Abstract
BiFeO3 is one of the very few room temperature multiferroic materials which possess two or more types of orders simultaneously that couple the electric and magnetic fields in a single phase. Though one-dimensional BiFeO3 nanostructures are reported in the literature with excellent ferroelectricity and ferromagnetism, nevertheless, there are no reports on measuring the magnetoelectric (ME) coupling, which is very challenging to observe at nanoscale. In their Letter on pp. 244–246, Prashanthi et al. report on the local ME coupling in multiferroic BiFeO3 nanowires synthesized by sol–gel based electrospinning. Using magnetic force microscopy (MFM), a significant change in magnetic domain pattern with externally applied electric field has been observed in these nanowires. More remarkably, the effect persists even after the electric field is removed, thereby implying an electric field induced magnetic hysteresis phenomenon in BiFeO3 nanowires. This study demonstrates the possibility of controllable coupling of magnetic and ferroelectric properties, suggesting electric field switching of the magnetization of single phase multiferroics at nanoscale. It is believed that these results open up many new applications in nanoscale multifunctional devices in which the device functionality can be controlled by applying either electric field or magnetic field.
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