Magnetic structure and ordering of multiferroic hexagonal LuFeO_{3}

Steven M Disseler; Julie A Borchers; Charles M Brooks; Julia A Mundy; Jarrett A Moyer; Daniel A Hillsberry; Eric L Thies; Dmitri A Tenne; John Heron; Megan E Holtz; James D Clarkson; Gregory M Stiehl; Peter Schiffer; David A Muller; Darrell G Schlom; William D Ratcliff

doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.114.217602

Magnetic structure and ordering of multiferroic hexagonal LuFeO_{3}

Phys Rev Lett. 2015 May 29;114(21):217602. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.114.217602. Epub 2015 May 27.

Authors

Steven M Disseler¹, Julie A Borchers¹, Charles M Brooks², Julia A Mundy³, Jarrett A Moyer⁴, Daniel A Hillsberry⁵, Eric L Thies⁵, Dmitri A Tenne⁵, John Heron², Megan E Holtz³, James D Clarkson⁶, Gregory M Stiehl⁷, Peter Schiffer⁴, David A Muller^{3

8}, Darrell G Schlom^{2

8}, William D Ratcliff¹

Affiliations

¹ NIST Center for Neutron Research, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, Maryland 20899, USA.
² Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853, USA.
³ School of Applied and Engineering Physics, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853, USA.
⁴ Department of Physics and Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA.
⁵ Department of Physics, Boise State University, Boise, Idaho 83725, USA.
⁶ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.
⁷ Department of Physics, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853, USA.
⁸ Kavli Institute at Cornell for Nanoscale Science, Ithaca, New York 14853, USA.

PMID: 26066458
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.114.217602

Abstract

We report on the magnetic structure and ordering of hexagonal LuFeO_{3} films of variable thickness grown by molecular-beam epitaxy on YSZ (111) and Al_{2}O_{3} (0001) substrates. These crystalline films exhibit long-range structural uniformity dominated by the polar P6_{3}cm phase, which is responsible for the paraelectric to ferroelectric transition that occurs above 1000 K. Using bulk magnetometry and neutron diffraction, we find that the system orders into a ferromagnetically canted antiferromagnetic state via a single transition below 155 K regardless of film thickness, which is substantially lower than that previously reported in hexagonal LuFeO_{3} films. The symmetry of the magnetic structure in the ferroelectric state implies that this material is a strong candidate for linear magnetoelectric coupling and control of the ferromagnetic moment directly by an electric field.