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Concurrent transition of ferroelectric and magnetic ordering near room temperature

2011; Nature Portfolio; Volume: 2; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1038/ncomms1576

2041-1723

Kyung‐Tae Ko, Min Hwa Jung, Qing He, Jin Hong Lee, Chang Su Woo, Kanghyun Chu, Jan Seidel, Byung-Gu Jeon, Yoon Seok Oh, Kee Hoon Kim, W.-I. Liang, Hsiang-Jung Chen, Ying‐Hao Chu, Yoon Hee Jeong, Ramamoorthy Ramesh, Jae-Hoon Park, Chan‐Ho Yang,

Advanced Condensed Matter Physics

Strong spin-lattice coupling in condensed matter gives rise to intriguing physical phenomena such as colossal magnetoresistance and giant magnetoelectric effects. The phenomenological hallmark of such a strong spin-lattice coupling is the manifestation of a large anomaly in the crystal structure at the magnetic transition temperature. Here we report that the magnetic Néel temperature of the multiferroic compound BiFeO3 is suppressed to around room temperature by heteroepitaxial misfit strain. Remarkably, the ferroelectric state undergoes a first-order transition to another ferroelectric state simultaneously with the magnetic transition temperature. Our findings provide a unique example of a concurrent magnetic and ferroelectric transition at the same temperature among proper ferroelectrics, taking a step toward room temperature magnetoelectric applications. Magnetoelectric materials combine ferroelectric and magnetic properties through a coupling of the spin and lattice degrees of freedom. Here, magnetoelectric bismuth ferrite is found to simultaneously undergo both a magnetic and a ferroelectric transition at the same temperature.