Large magnetoelectric effect in ferroelectric/piezomagnetic heterostructures

Abstract

We present results of the first principles calculations on the large magnetoelectric effect in ferroelectric/piezomagnetic multilayers. We consider thin film layered heterostructure of typical ferroelectric, such as PbTiO3, with piezomagnetic (PzM) Mn-based antiperovskite, such as Mn3GaN. The atomic displacements induced by the FE polarization as well as mechanical stress at the interface break the triangular magnetic symmetry of the PzM phase producing net magnetization in the system. Induced magnetization can be controlled by changing the direction of polarization in ferroelectric phase. Our calculations show that reversal of the polarization results in change of the net magnetization in the system by more than 50%.

Frustrated Triangular Magnetic Structures of Mn3ZnN: Applications in Thermal Expansion

“…Recently, intermediate-T Γ 5g AFM phase that controls ZTE and has a larger volume (compared with PM phase) was found to be tunable by chemical substitution at Zn site, such as Ge or Sn 27,32,33. On the other hand, reliable methods of the unconstrained noncollinear first-principles study was well established34 -36 and widely adopted for explaining and predicting physical properties of materials 25,34,37. In this study, the first-principles study based onvarious exchange-correlation (EC) functionals has been developed in order to get the reasonable ground state of Mn 3 ZnN.…”

Epitaxial antiperovskite/perovskite heterostructures for materials design

“…The ability to engineer such novel heterointerfaces from chemically divergent constituents brings a new dimension to the mature field of complex oxides and provides a playground for the manipulation of the inter facial physical properties and the establishment of new states of matter. In particular, Mnbased nitride antiperovskites with non collinear  5g triangular antiferromagnetic structures are ideal systems to interface with piezoelectric or ferroelectric oxide compounds to induce piezomagnetic or magnetoelectric effects in the antiperov skite, as recently proposed theoretically (16)(17)(18)(19) and demonstrated experi mentally (22). In addition, materials showing geometrically frustrated antiferromagnetic spin structures are the source of intriguing physical behavior, including large anomalous Hall (23,24) and Nernst effects, large magnetoresistance, spin transfer torque, and spin Hall effect (25)(26)(27)(28).…”

“…Like their oxide perovskite counterparts, antiperovskite materials show a variety of tunable physical properties, including superconductivity, itinerant antiferromagnetism, giant magnetoresistance, large magnetovolume effects, and topological electronic behavior (8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15). Among anti perovskite materials, transition metal (TM)-based nitride compounds (M 3 XN; M: TM; X: metallic or semiconducting element) are particu larly interesting as their physical behaviors are remarkably sensitive to external perturbations such as magnetic fields, temperature, or pres sure (14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20). This is mainly due to the strong spinlattice coupling characteristic of M 3 XN compounds.…”

Electrically reversible magnetization at the antiperovskite/perovskite interface

“…This is due to the strong ionic bonding between Mn cations and O anions at the interface when Mn is located atop of O. In this regard, a stoichiometric ATiO 3 /GaNMn 3 supercell [58] is expected to be energetically unfavorable.…”