Dresden 2017 – scientific programme

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DF: Fachverband Dielektrische Festkörper

DF 17: Ferroics - Domains, Domain Walls and Skyrmions IV

DF 17.8: Talk

Thursday, March 23, 2017, 11:45–12:00, WIL B321

The effect of strain on the magnetic and ferroelectric properties of orthorhombic TbMnO₃ — •Amadé Bortis¹, Natalya Fedorova², Alessandro Vindigni³, Andrea Scaramucci², and Nicola Spaldin² — ¹Laboratory for Multifunctional Ferroic Materials (M. Fiebig), Departement of Materials, ETH Zurich, Switzerland — ²Materials Theory, Departement of Materials, ETH Zurich, Switzerland — ³Microstructure Research, Departement of Physics, ETH Zurich, Switzerland

We model the effect of strain on magnetic and ferroelectric properties of orthorhombic TbMnO₃ using ab initio electronic structure calculations and Monte-Carlo simulations. TbMnO₃ is a magnetoelectric multiferroic, where the ferroelectricity is triggered by the magnetic ordering, which allows manipulating the electric polarization by a change in the magnetic order. It was shown experimentally that bulk samples of TbMnO₃, at low temperature, show a spiral magnetic order, which drives a weak polarization. Recent experiments showed that by applying strain one can change the magnetic order to E-AFM, which leads to a higher polarization. In order to understand the transition from spiral to E-AFM order, we perform ab initio calculations to extract the relevant exchange couplings for a bulk and strained sample, and we use these couplings to perform Monte-Carlo simulations to find the corresponding ground state spin configuration. This allows the determination of the magnetic order and the investigation of its effect on the polarization. We found that applying strain can drive the transition from spiral to E-AFM ordering and can enhance the polarization.