Absence of polar order in LuFe2O4

Abstract

LuFe2O4 often is considered as a prototypical multiferroic with polar order arising from the electronic degrees of freedom only ("electronic ferroelectricity"). In the present work, we check the intrinsic nature of the dielectric response of this material by performing dielectric measurements of polycrystalline samples with different types of contact materials and with different grain sizes. In addition, frequency-dependent measurements of the electric-field dependent polarization are provided. The obtained results unequivocally prove that the reported colossal dielectric constants in LuFe2O4, which were interpreted in terms of electronic ferroelectricity, are of non-intrinsic surface-related origin. The intrinsic dielectric properties of this material show no indications of any ferroelectric order and, thus, LuFe2O4 is not multiferroic. Its intrinsic dielectric constant is close to 20 and its dielectric loss is dominated by charge transport via variable range hopping.

6 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (6)

• Colossal dielectric constants in single-crystalline and ceramic CaCu3Ti4O12 investigated by broadband dielectric spectroscopy
• Three Dimensional Magnetic Correlations in Multiferroic LuFe2O4
• Broadband dielectric spectroscopy on single-crystalline and ceramic CaCu3Ti4O12
• Charge order in LuFe2O4: antiferroelectric ground state and coupling to magnetism
• New phase transition in $P{r}_{1-x}C{a}_{x}Mn{O}_3$ system: evidence for electrical polarization in charge ordered manganites
• Relaxor ferroelectricity and the freezing of short-range polar order in magnetite

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Conductivity contrast and tunneling charge transport in the vortex-like ferroelectric domain patterns of multiferroic hexagonal YMnO3
• Ferroelectric properties of charge-ordered alpha-(BEDT-TTF)2I3
• Ferroelectric and Magnetic Domains in LuFe2O4 Observed by Scanning Probe Microscopy
• Charge Order Breaks Magnetic Symmetry in Molecular Quantum Spin Chains
• Growth of layered Lu${}_2$Fe${}_3$O${}_7$ and Lu${}_3$Fe${}_4$O${}_{10}$ single crystals exhibiting long-range charge order via the optical floating-zone method