New Routes to Optimised Multiferroics

许多用于传感器和数据存储技术的材料使用与原子电矩或磁矩排列相关的效应。认为材料应该具有电性有序(称为铁电有序)或磁性有序(称为铁磁有序)，但不能两者兼而有之，这是有根本原因的。然而，某些被称为多铁性的材料打破了这一规则，确实表现出了这两种效应，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，但人们对多铁性的了解很少。这项提议代表了牛津大学、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。通过使用最先进的方法、中子、X射线、µ子、磁测量、磁介电测量和电子显微镜的组合，我们有可能对这个复杂的问题有新的理解，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.