Large linear magnetoelectric effect and field-induced ferromagnetism and ferroelectricity in DyCrO4

Xudong Shen,Yan Wu,Zhehong Liu,Angel Muñoz,Youwen Long,Young Sun,Clarina Dela Cruz,José Antonio Alonso,Yunyu Yin,Yisheng Chai,Changqing Jin,Long Zhou,Huibo Cao

doi:10.1038/s41427-019-0151-9

Abstract

All the magnetoelectric properties of scheelite-type DyCrO4 are characterized by temperature- and field-dependent magnetization, specific heat, permittivity, electric polarization, and neutron diffraction measurements. Upon application of a magnetic field within ±3 T, the nonpolar collinear antiferromagnetic structure leads to a large linear magnetoelectric effect with a considerable coupling coefficient. An applied electric field can induce the converse linear magnetoelectric effect, realizing magnetic field control of ferroelectricity and electric field control of magnetism. Furthermore, a higher magnetic field (>3 T) can cause a metamagnetic transition from the initially collinear antiferromagnetic structure to a canted structure, generating a large ferromagnetic magnetization up to 7.0 μB f.u.−1. Moreover, the new spin structure can break the space inversion symmetry, yielding ferroelectric polarization, which leads to coupling of ferromagnetism and ferroelectricity with a large ferromagnetic component.

Highlights

1234567890():,; 1234567890():,; 1234567890():,; 1234567890():,; Introduction The linear magnetoelectric (ME) effect and multiferroicity enable control of polarization P by a magnetic field, which is beneficial for applications in spintronic devices, nonvolatile memories, high-sensitivity magnetic field sensors, etc[1,2,3,4,5]
In the linear ME effect, the induced electric polarization or magnetization is proportional to the applied magnetic field H or electric field E, which can be expressed as P = αH or μ0M = αE6,7, where α denotes the linear ME coefficient and μ0 denotes the magnetic permeability of a vacuum
In the 1990s, the term “multiferroics” was proposed to describe materials that simultaneously exhibit more than one ferroic order, such as ferromagnetism, ferroelectricity, and ferroelasticity, in a single phase[10]

Summary

Introduction

The linear magnetoelectric (ME) effect and multiferroicity enable control of polarization P (magnetization M) by a magnetic (electric) field, which is beneficial for applications in spintronic devices, nonvolatile memories, high-sensitivity magnetic field sensors, etc[1,2,3,4,5]. With the decrease in temperature to TN = 24 K, both the magnetic susceptibility measured at 0.01 T and specific heat at zero field show an AFM phase transition (Fig. 1b). To demonstrate the linear ME effect in an experiment, we first measure the temperature dependences of the relative dielectric permittivity and dielectric loss at different magnetic fields with an H⊥E configuration, as shown, d.

Results

Conclusion