Nanosession: Multiferroic Thin Films and Heterostructures

This chapter presents the theoretical and experimental evidence of a novel magnetoelectric mechanism producing a giant resistive switching effect at the interface between a ferroelectric perovskite oxide, BaTiO3 (BTO), and a complex oxide manganite electrode, La1-xSrxMnO3. It presents a detailed study of the magnetic properties of multiferroic hybrid systems consisting of BTO as the ferroelectric and Ni or Fe3O4 as the ferromagnetic layers. The chapter discusses the possibility of achieving electric control of the magnetization, possibly at room temperature, through a specific (trilinear) coupling of the polarization with two other non-polar lattice instabilities which occurs in the so-called hybrid improper ferroelectrics. First-principles modelling techniques are used to investigate a promising system: BiFeO3/LaFeO3 superlattice. It presents the investigation of the multiferroic properties in TbMnO3 thin films with soft X-ray resonant magnetic scattering (XRMS) performed at the UE46-PGM1 beamline of BESSY II.