In:
Scientific Reports, Springer Science and Business Media LLC, Vol. 7, No. 1 ( 2017-03-20)
Kurzfassung:
A current challenge in the field of magnetoelectric multiferroics is to identify systems that allow a controlled tuning of states displaying distinct magnetoelectric responses. Here we show that the multiferroic ground state of the archetypal multiferroic TbMnO 3 is dramatically modified by epitaxial strain. Neutron diffraction reveals that in highly strained films the magnetic order changes from the bulk-like incommensurate bc -cycloidal structure to commensurate magnetic order. Concomitant with the modification of the magnetic ground state, optical second-harmonic generation (SHG) and electric measurements show an enormous increase of the ferroelectric polarization, and a change in its direction from along the c - to the a -axis. Our results suggest that the drastic change of multiferroic properties results from a switch of the spin-current magnetoelectric coupling in bulk TbMnO 3 to symmetric magnetostriction in epitaxially-strained TbMnO 3 . These findings experimentally demonstrate that epitaxial strain can be used to control single-phase spin-driven multiferroic states.
Materialart:
Online-Ressource
ISSN:
2045-2322
Sprache:
Englisch
Verlag:
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Publikationsdatum:
2017
ZDB Id:
2615211-3