Banani Biswas, Bixin Yan, Morgan Trassin, Dirk Fuchs, Ekatarina V. Pomjakushina, Manfred Fiebig, Thomas Lippert, Christof W. Schneider;
Abstract:
Epitaxial strain in antiferromagnetic orthoferrite thin films is predicted to significantly enhance magnetic and polar properties with a shift of the polar response from below 4 K to room temperature and above by strengthening the rare earth-Fe interaction. In DyFeO3, the Fe-spins undergo a spin reorientation transition between 40–50 K, and a magnetic field-induced ferroelectric phase transition is triggered by Dy ordering and displacement below 4 K. Here we report an increase in the spin reorientation temperature by more than 20 K in compressively strained DyFeO3 films. The expected sharp spin transition is several 10 K wide, incomplete and largely suppressed, with the magnetic point group remaining at Γ4 at all temperatures. The strain-induced Dy ordering above 4 K reduces the magnetic symmetry and introduces room-temperature polar order with the electrical polarization vector oriented along [100] and polarization values of more than 3 µC/cm2.
Keywords: DyFeO3; magnetic characterization; magnetism; orthoferrite; polar properties; pulsed laser deposition; Thin film growth;
Facility: Thin Films and Interfaces; LMX; ETH Zurich; Department of Materials; Department of Chemistry; Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Institute for Quantum Materials and Technologies, Karlsruhe, Germany
Reference: B. Biswas et al. , Advanced Electronic Materials , 2026; 0:e70533
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