Magnetoelectric domains and their switching mechanism in a Y-type hexaferrite

DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevB.100.104411

Authors: F. P. Chmiel (University of Oxford) , D. Prabhakaran (University of Oxford) , P. Steadman (Diamond Light Source) , J. Chen (University of Oxford) , R. Fan (Diamond Light Source) , R. D. Johnson (University of Oxford) , P. G. Radaelli (University of Oxford)
Co-authored by industrial partner: No

Type: Journal Paper
Journal: Physical Review B , VOL 100

State: Published (Approved)
Published: September 2019
Diamond Proposal Number(s): 14826 , 17388

Abstract: By employing resonant x-ray microdiffraction, we image the magnetization and magnetic polarity domains of the Y -type hexaferrite Ba 0.5 Sr 1.5 Mg 2 Fe 12 O 22 . We show that the magnetic polarity domain structure can be controlled by both magnetic and electric fields and that full inversion of these domains can be achieved simply by reversal of an applied magnetic field in the absence of an electric field bias. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the diffraction intensity measured in different x-ray polarization channels cannot be reproduced by the accepted model for the polar magnetic structure, known as the 2-fan transverse conical (TC) model. We propose a modification to this model, which achieves good quantitative agreement with all of our data. We show that the deviations from the TC model are large and may be the result of an internal magnetic chirality, most likely inherited from the parent helical (nonpolar) phase.

Journal Keywords: Magnetic domains; Magnetoelectric effect; Helimagnets; Multiferroics

Diamond Keywords: Antiferromagnetism

Subject Areas: Materials, Physics


Instruments: I10-Beamline for Advanced Dichroism - scattering

Added On: 05/10/2021 10:04

Discipline Tags:

Quantum Materials Multiferroics Physics Hard condensed matter - structures Magnetism Materials Science

Technical Tags:

Scattering Resonant Soft X-ray Scattering (RSXS)