Emergent room-temperature ferroelectricity in spark-plasma sintered DyCrO${}_3$ and LaCrO${}_3$

Abstract

Identification of novel multiferroic materials with high-ordering temperatures remains at the forefront of condensed matter physics research. In this regard, the antiferromagnetic RCrO${}_3$ compounds (like GdCrO${}_3$) constitute a promising class of multiferroic compounds, which, however, mostly become ferroelectric concomitant with the antiferromagnetic ordering much below room-temperature, arising from a subtle competition between the ferroelectric off-centering mode and a non-polar antiferrodistortive rotation mode that inhibits ferroelectricity. Recently, room-temperature ferroelectricity of structural origin, arising from off-centering displacements of R and Cr ions, has been identified in spark-plasma sintered GdCrO${}_3$ [Suryakanta Mishra et al., Phys. Rev. B 104, L180101 (2021)]. Interestingly, some of the experimentally observed non-ferroelectric RCrO${}_3$ compounds have been theoretically predicted to host similar ferroelectric instabilities. Here, we have identified two such non-ferroelectric RCrO3 compounds, one DyCrO${}_3$ (which is reported as a quantum paraelectric) and another LaCrO${}_3$ (which is paraelectric), and using a modified synthesis protocol involving spark-plasma-sintering (SPS), we have been successful in engineering an intrinsic room-temperature ferroelectricity in the paramagnetic state, driven by noncentrosymmetric structural phase in both SPS sintered DyCrO${}_3$ and LaCrO${}_3$, in contrast to room-temperature paraelectricity in solid-state synthesized DyCrO${}_3$ and LaCrO${}_3$. While the ferroelectricity in SPS-prepared DyCrO${}_3$ and LaCrO${}_3$ is stable at room-temperature, it undergoes an irreversible transition from a ferroelectric (Pna2${}_1$) phase to a paraelectric (Pbnm) phase at 440 K. Significantly, SPS-sintered LaCrO${}_3$, which undergoes antiferromagnetic ordering at 290 K, emerges as a promising near room-temperature multiferroic material.

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Cited by in corpus (1)

• Anisotropic magnetic phase diagrams, tricriticality, and spin-reorientation in high-pressure grown SmCrO${}_3$ single crystals