Scientists at the University of Liverpool have controlled the structure of a material to simultaneously generate both magnetisation and electrical polarisation. The team says the development has potential applications in information storage and processing.
Making a single material demonstrating magnetisation and electrical polarisation is said to be difficult because the electronic requirements for obtaining them in a material are typically contradictory: characteristics which favour polarisation often disfavour magnetisation. However, the researchers, from the University's School of Physical Sciences, showed that by making designed changes to a structure, it is possible to create these properties in a material – a perovskite, in this case – which initially displayed neither.
Professor Matthew Rosseinsky said: "We were able to demonstrate that magnetisation and polarisation are coupled by measuring the linear magnetoelectric coefficient, a key physical quantity for the integration of such materials in a device. This coupling arises because both properties are produced by the same single set atomic motions that we built in to the material.
"There are a number of challenges still to address, particularly switching the polarisation and making the material more electrically insulating, before applications of this material for information storage can be considered."
Author
Graham Pitcher
Source: www.newelectronics.co.uk