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Description
Magneto-electric multiferroics is an attractive class of materials, not only for the diversity of exciting fundamental phenomena that they present but as well the potential technological applications that they foresee, such as energy efficient memory devices and multiple state memories. However multiferroic materials with high ME coupling at room temperature are rare and high quality artificially layered ones are in general difficult to produce. In this respect naturally layered perovskites, such as the Ruddlesden-Popper phases or A/B-site ordered Double perovskites, offer a fascinating route to design and achieve nonexpensive room temperature multiferroics. In these structurally layered materials, distortions of the lattice couple to polar dislocation modes, inducing cation ordering and spontaneous ferroelectric polarization, in a mechanism known as the hybrid improper ferroelectricity. The novel idea behind these naturally layered perovskites is that the ferromagnetic and ferroelectric order can be coupled by the same lattice instabilities, providing an indirect but very strong magneto-electric coupling.
Focusing on the Ruddlesden-Popper phases (An+1BnO3n+1) we will present our recent results using Perturbed Angular Correlation γ- γ hyperfine technique that offers a unique opportunity to probe at the local scale the structural, charge and magnetic phase transitions of these NLP systems.