Magnetoelectric coupling of domains, domain walls and vortices in a multiferroic with independent magnetic and electric order

Marcela Giraldo, Quintin N. Meier, Amadé Bortis, Dominik Nowak, Nicola A. Spaldin, Manfred Fiebig, Mads C. Weber and Thomas Lottermoser ()
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Marcela Giraldo: ETH Zurich
Quintin N. Meier: ETH Zurich
Amadé Bortis: ETH Zurich
Dominik Nowak: ETH Zurich
Nicola A. Spaldin: ETH Zurich
Manfred Fiebig: ETH Zurich
Mads C. Weber: ETH Zurich
Thomas Lottermoser: ETH Zurich

Nature Communications, 2021, vol. 12, issue 1, 1-7

Abstract: Abstract Magnetically induced ferroelectrics exhibit rigidly coupled magnetic and electric order. The ordering temperatures and spontaneous polarization of these multiferroics are notoriously low, however. Both properties can be much larger if magnetic and ferroelectric order occur independently, but the cost of this independence is that pronounced magnetoelectric interaction is no longer obvious. Using spatially resolved images of domains and density-functional theory, we show that in multiferroics with separately emerging magnetic and ferroelectric order, the microscopic magnetoelectric coupling can be intrinsically strong even though the macroscopic leading-order magnetoelectric effect is forbidden by symmetry. We show, taking hexagonal ErMnO3 as an example, that a strong bulk coupling between the ferroelectric and antiferromagnetic order is realized because the structural distortions that lead to the ferroelectric polarization also break the balance of the competing superexchange contributions. We observe the manifestation of this coupling in uncommon types of topological defects like magnetoelectric domain walls and vortex-like singularities.

Date: 2021
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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-22587-1

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