Improper ferroelectric polarization in a perovskite driven by intersite charge transfer and ordering

DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevB.97.144102

Authors: Wei-Tin Chen (National Taiwan University; Taiwan Consortium of Emergent Crystalline Materials) , Chin-Wei Wang (National Synchrotron Radiation Research Center) , Hung-Cheng Wu (National Sun Yat-Sen University) , Fang-Cheng Chou (National Taiwan University; Taiwan Consortium of Emergent Crystalline Materials; National Synchrotron Radiation Research Center) , Hung-Duen Yang (National Sun Yat-Sen University) , Arkadiy Simonov (University of Oxford) , M. S. Senn (University of Warwick)
Co-authored by industrial partner: No

Type: Journal Paper
Journal: Physical Review B , VOL 97

State: Published (Approved)
Published: April 2018
Diamond Proposal Number(s): 13284 , 13639 , 15920

Abstract: It is of great interest to design and make materials in which ferroelectric polarization is coupled to other order parameters such as lattice, magnetic, and electronic instabilities. Such materials will be invaluable in next-generation data storage devices. Recently, remarkable progress has been made in understanding improper ferroelectric coupling mechanisms that arise from lattice and magnetic instabilities. However, although theoretically predicted, a compact lattice coupling between electronic and ferroelectric (polar) instabilities has yet to be realized. Here we report detailed crystallographic studies of a perovskite HgAMn A′ 3Mn B 4O12 that is found to exhibit a polar ground state on account of such couplings that arise from charge and orbital ordering on both the A′- and B-sites, which are themselves driven by a highly unusual MnA′−MnB intersite charge transfer. The inherent coupling of polar, charge, orbital, and hence magnetic degrees of freedom make this a system of great fundamental interest, and demonstrating ferroelectric switching in this and a host of recently reported hybrid improper ferroelectrics remains a substantial challenge.

Journal Keywords: Charge order; Charge polarization; Crystal structure; Ferroelectricity; First order phase transitions; Magnetic order parameter; Orbital order; Structural order parameter; Multiferroics; Magnetization measurements; X-ray diffraction

Diamond Keywords: Ferroelectricity

Subject Areas: Materials, Chemistry, Physics


Instruments: I11-High Resolution Powder Diffraction , I19-Small Molecule Single Crystal Diffraction

Other Facilities: Taiwan Photon Source; European Synchrotron Radiation Facility

Added On: 11/04/2018 10:25

Documents:
Phys344RevB.97.pdf

Discipline Tags:

Quantum Materials Hard condensed matter - electronic properties Physics Physical Chemistry Chemistry Materials Science Perovskites Metallurgy

Technical Tags:

Diffraction Single Crystal X-ray Diffraction (SXRD) X-ray Powder Diffraction