Manipulating magnetoelectric energy landscape in multiferroics

Magnetoelectric coupling at room temperature in multiferroic materials, such as BiFeO₃, is one of the leading candidates to develop low-power spintronics and emerging memory technologies. Although extensive research activity has been devoted recently to exploring the physical properties, especially focusing on ferroelectricity and antiferromagnetism in chemically modified BiFeO₃, a concrete understanding of the magnetoelectric coupling is yet to be fulfilled. We have discovered that La substitutions at the Bi-site lead to a progressive increase in the degeneracy of the potential energy landscape of the BiFeO₃ system exemplified by a rotation of the polar axis away from the 〈111〉_pc towards the 〈112〉_pc discretion. This is accompanied by corresponding rotation of the antiferromagnetic axis as well, thus maintaining the right-handed vectorial relationship between ferroelectric polarization, antiferromagnetic vector and the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya vector. As a consequence, La-BiFeO₃ films exhibit a magnetoelectric coupling that is distinctly different from the undoped BiFeO₃ films.