Combining Magnetism and Ferroelectricity towards Multiferroicity

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The attempts to combine both the magnetic and ferroelectric properties in one material started in 1960s predominantly by the group of Smolenskii and Schmid [1. Dzyaloshinskii first presented the theory for multiferroicity in Cr2O3, which was soon experimentally confirmed by Astrov [5,. Further work on multiferroics was done by the group of Smolenskii in St. Petersburg (then Leningrad) [7, but the term multiferroic was first used by H. Schmid in 1994 [. These efforts have resulted in many fundamental observations and opened up an entirely new field of study. Schmid [ defined the multiferroics as single phase materials which simultaneously possess two or more primary ferroic properties. The term multiferroic has been expanded to include materials which exhibit any type of long range magnetic ordering, spontaneous electric polarization, and/or ferroelasticity. In the past decade, several hundreds of papers related to multiferroic materials and magnetoelectric effect have been published every year, making this topic one of the hottest areas in condensed matter physics from fundamental science as well as applications viewpoints. This article sheds light on recent progress about the developments of new multiferroics by combining unconventional magnetism and ferroelectricity with an emphasis on Bi based multiferroic materials. Specifically results of Ti doped BiMn2O5and Bi doped Co2MnO4multiferroics are discussed.