Large magnetoresistive materials are of immense interest for a number of spintronic applications by developing high density magnetic memory devices, magnetic sensors and magnetic switches. Colossal magnetoresistance, for which resistivity changes several order of magnitude (∼ 10 4 %) in an external magnetic field, occurs mainly in phase separated oxide materials, namely manganites, due to the phase competition between the ferromagnetic metallic and the antiferromagnetic insulating regions. Can one further enhance the magnetoresistance by tuning the volume fraction of the two phases? In this work, we report a huge colossal magnetoresistance along with the ultra-sharp metamagnetic transition in half doped Sm0.5Ca0.25Sr0.25M nO3 manganite compound by suitably tuning the volume fraction of the competing phases. The obtained magnetoresistance value at 10 K is as large as ∼ 10 13 % in a 30 kOe external magnetic field and ∼ 10 15 % in 90 kOe external magnetic field and is several orders of magnitude higher than any other observed magnetoresistance value reported so far. Using model Hamiltonian calculations we have shown that the inhomogeneous disorder, deduced from tunneling electron microscopy, suppresses the CE-type phase and seeds the ferromagnetic metal in an external magnetic field. arXiv:1710.03007v2 [cond-mat.mtrl-sci]

Simultaneous co-existence of room-temperature(T) ferromagnetism and ferroelectricity in Fe doped BaTiO3 (BTO) is intriguing, as such Fe doping into tetragonal BTO, a room-T ferroelectric (FE), results in the stabilization of its hexagonal polymorph which is FE only below ∼80K. Here, we investigate its origin and show that Fe-doped BTO has a mixed-phase room-temperature multiferroicity, where the ferromagnetism comes from the majority hexagonal phase and a minority tetragonal phase gives rise to the observed weak ferroelectricity. In order to achieve majority tetragonal phase (responsible for room-T ferroelectricity) in Fe-doped BTO, we investigate the role of different parameters which primarily control the PE hexagonal phase stability over the FE tetragonal one and identify three major factors namely, the effect of ionic size, Jahn-Teller (J-T) distortions and oxygen vacancies (OVs), to be primarily responsible. The effect of ionic size which can be qualitatively represented using the Goldschmidt's tolerance (GT) factor seems to be the major dictating factor for the hexagonal phase stability. The understanding of these factors not only enables us to control them but also, achieve suitable co-doped BTO compound with enhanced room-T multiferroic properties.

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