1302.3983 (Somdutta Mukherjee et al.)

Room Temperature Nanoscale Ferroelectricity in Magnetoelectric GaFeO3
Epitaxial Thin Films    [PDF]

Somdutta Mukherjee, Amritendu Roy, Sushil Auluck, Rajendra Prasad, Rajeev Gupta, Ashish Garg

We demonstrate room temperature ferroelectricity in the epitaxial thin films of magnetoelectric GaFeO3. Our first principles calculations further show that contrary to conventional perception that ferroelectricity and magnetism exclude each other, the observed ferroelectricity in GaFeO3 emanates from displacement of Fe ions, simultaneously responsible for the observed ferrimagnetism via Ga/Fe octahedral site disordering. Such unique mechanism of multiferroism with coexistence of room temperature ferroelectricity and tunable ferrimagnetism makes GaFeO3 a prospective near-room temperature multiferroic with presence of magnetoelectric coupling.

View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1302.3983