Magnetoelectric coupling and decoupling in multiferroic hexagonal YbFeO3 thin films

Abstract

The coupling between ferroelectric and magnetic orders in multiferroic materials and the nature of magnetoelectric (ME) effects are enduring experimental challenges. In this work, we have studied the response of magnetization to ferroelectric switching in thin-film hexagonal YbFeO3, a prototypical improper multiferroic. The bulk ME decoupling and potential domain-wall ME coupling were revealed using x-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD) measurements with in-situ ferroelectric polarization switching. Our Landau theory analysis suggests that the bulk ME-coupled ferroelectric switching path has a higher energy barrier than that of the ME-decoupled path; this extra barrier energy is also too high to be reduced by the magneto-static energy in the process of breaking single magnetic domains into multi-domains. In addition, the reduction of magnetization around the ferroelectric domain walls predicted by the Landau theory may induce the domain-wall ME coupling in which the magnetization is correlated with the density of ferroelectric domain walls. These results provide important experimental evidence and theoretical insights into the rich possibilities of ME couplings in hexagonal ferrites, such as manipulating the magnetic states by an electric field.

33 pages, 14 figures

References in corpus (6)

• Domain Switching Kinetics in Disordered Ferroelectric Thin Films
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• Dual mechanisms for transient capacitance anomaly in improper ferroelectrics
• Strong tunability of epitaxial relationship and reconstruction at improper ferroelectric interface
• Polarization Pinning at Antiphase Boundaries in Multiferroic YbFeO${}_3$
• Second-Order Synaptic Memory using Inherent Plasticity of Moiré Superlattices