Room Temperature Magnetoelectric & Multiferroic Films and Composites for novel Devices

下一代的小型化设备将越来越依赖于“智能材料”，这种材料具有通过以可逆的方式突然改变其属性来响应外部刺激的不可思议的能力。同时具有磁性和铁电性有序性的多铁性材料是潜在的智能材料。虽然这些化合物中的磁有序和铁电性之间的相互作用是目前凝聚态物理学中未回答的基本问题之一，但这两种有序同时发生的情况很少，而且经常发生在低温下。最近出现的薄膜和纳米结构的材料具有良好的多铁性在室温下一直是一个转折点，开辟了使用多铁性/磁电到新型集成器件的方式，在传感，能量转换，以及光子学和高频电子电信等领域。

The next generation of miniaturized devices will increasingly rely on "smart materials", materials with the uncanny ability to respond to an external stimulus by abruptly changing their properties in a reversible manner. Multiferroics, exhibiting at once, a magnetic and a ferroelectric ordering are potentially such smart materials. While the interplay between magnetic ordering and ferroelectricity in these compounds is presently one of the unanswered fundamental questions in condensed matter physics, the occurrence of both orders simultaneously is rare and very often occurs at low temperature. The recent emergence of thin films and nanostructures of materials with good multiferroic properties at room temperature has been a turning point opening the way for using multiferroics/magnetoelectrics into novel integrated devices, in areas such as sensing, energy conversion, as well as photonics and high-frequency electronics for telecommunication.