Monday, September 17, 2012

1209.3293 (Wenbin Wang et al.)

Room-temperature coexistence of magnetic order and ferroelectricity in
single crystal hexagonal LuFeO3 films
   [PDF]

Wenbin Wang, Jun Zhao, Zheng Gai, Nina Balke, Miaofang Chi, Ho Nyung Lee, Wei Tian, Leyi Zhu, Xuemei Cheng, David J. Keavney, Jieyu Yi, Thomas Z. Ward, Paul C. Snijders, Hans M. Christen, Jian Shen, Xiaoshan Xu
In the quest for new types of information processing and storage, complex oxides stand out as one of the most promising material classes. The multiple functionalities of complex oxides naturally arise from the delicate energy balance between the various form of order (structural, electronic, magnetic). In particular, multiferroic oxides which simultaneously exhibit more than one type of ferroic order have many advantages over other existing materials. As a prerequisite, coexistence of long range magnetic and electric orders at room temperature will be required for widespread practical applications for a multiferroic material. So far, there is only one material, BiFeO3, known to exhibit ferroelectricity and antiferromagnetic order above room temperature. Moreover, integrating the advantages offered by these materials into existing technologies will require them to be interfaced with other materials without compromising their properties. In this work, we find that epitaxial films of hexagonal-LuFeO3 (h-LuFeO3) grown in single crystalline form on either insulating or metallic substrates using pulsed laser deposition (PLD) exhibit hysteresis in piezoresponse force microscopy (PFM) measurements indicative of ferroelectricity at room temperature, and simultaneously show an antiferromagnetic order with TN=440 K.
View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1209.3293

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