New Routes to Optimised Multiferroics

在传感器和数据存储技术中使用的许多材料使用与原子电或磁矩的排列相关联的效应。有基本的理由认为，材料应该有电秩序（称为铁电秩序）或磁秩序（称为铁磁秩序），但不能两者兼而有之。然而，某些材料，称为多铁性，打破了这一规则，并显示出这两种效果，因此具有一些相当有趣的性质。然后，铁磁有序可以由电场控制，或者铁电有序可以由磁场控制。这可能会对传感器和数据存储应用产生革命性的影响，但人们对多铁性知之甚少。该提案代表了牛津大学，伦敦大学学院和帝国理工学院之间的跨学科合作（物理，化学，材料），旨在使用实验技术的组合来解决这个问题。通过使用这种最先进的方法，中子，x射线，μ子，磁力测量，磁介电测量和电子显微镜的组合，我们有可能在这个复杂的问题上获得新的理解，我们希望为未来的应用提供优化材料的设计。

Many materials which are used in sensor and data storage technology use effects associated with the alignment of atomic electric or magnetic moments. There are fundamental reasons for thinking that materials should either have electric order (called ferroelectric order) or magnetic order (called ferromagnetic order), but not both. However certain materials, called multiferroics, break this rule and do show both effects, and therefore have some rather intriguing properties. Ferromagnetic order can then be controlled by an electric field, or ferroelectric order can be controlled by a magnetic field. This could have a revolutionary effect on sensors and data storage applications, but multiferroics are poorly understood. This proposal represents an interdisciplinary collaboration (Physics, Chemistry, Materials) between Oxford, UCL and Imperial, which aims to use a combination of experimental techniques to solve this problem. By using this combination of state-of-the-art methods, neutrons, x-rays, muons, magnetometry, magnetodielectric measurements and electron microscopy, we have the possibility of gaining new understanding in this complex problem which we hope to feed in to the design of optimised materials for future applications.