Multiferroic and magnetoelectric nature of GaFeO3, AlFeO3 and related oxides

Abstract

GaFeO3, AlFeO3 and related oxides are ferrimagnetic exhibiting magnetodielectric effect. There has been no evidence to date for ferroelectricity and hence multiferroicity in these oxides. We have investigated these oxides as well as oxides of the composition Al1-x-yGaxFe1+yO3 (x = 0.2, y = 0.2) for possible ferroelectricity by carrying out pyroelectric measurements. These measurements establish the occurrence of ferroelectricity at low temperatures below the Nèel temperature in these oxides. They also exhibit significant magnetoelectric effect. We have tried to understand the origin of ferroelectricity based on non-centrosymmetric magnetic ordering and disorder by carrying out first-principles calculations.

21 pages,7 figures

References in corpus (2)

• Electromagnons in multiferroic RMn2O5 compounds and their microscopic origin
• Coupled Phonons, Magnetic Excitations and Ferroelectricity in AlFeO3: Raman and First-principles Studies

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• Coupled Phonons, Magnetic Excitations and Ferroelectricity in AlFeO3: Raman and First-principles Studies
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• Investigation of Room Temperature Ferroelectricity and Ferrimagnetism in Multiferroic AlxFe2-xO3 Epitaxial Thin Films
• Room temperature polarization in the ferrimagnetic Ga2-xFexO3 ceramics
• Electrical polarization switching in bulk single crystal GaFeO${}_3$
• Spectroscopic Studies of Iron-based Superconductors, Multi-ferroic Oxides and Double-perovskite: Phonons, Electronic and Spin Excitations
• Ferroelectric polarization switching with a remarkably high activation-energy in orthorhombic GaFeO3 thin films