Ferroelectricity in an Ising Chain Magnet

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Y. J. Choi,¹ H. T. Yi,¹ S. Lee,¹ Q. Huang,² V. Kiryukhin,¹ and S.-W. Cheong¹
¹Rutgers Center for Emergent Materials and Department of Physics & Astronomy, 136 Frelinghuysen Road, Piscataway, New Jersey, 08854, USA
²NIST Center for Neutron Research, NIST, Gaithersburg, Maryland 20899, USA

Received 13 September 2007; published 29 January 2008

Wereport discovery of collinear-magnetism-driven ferroelectricity in the Ising chain magnetCa₃Co_2-xMn_xO₆ (x [approximate] 0.96). Neutron diffraction shows that Co²⁺ and Mn⁴⁺ ionsalternating along the chains exhibit an up-up-down-down ( [up-arrow] [down-arrow] ) magnetic order.The ferroelectricity results from the inversion symmetry breaking in the spin chain with an alternating charge order. Unlike inspiral magnetoelectrics where antisymmetric exchange coupling is active, the symmetrybreaking in Ca₃(Co,Mn)₂O₆ occurs through exchange striction associated with symmetricsuperexchange.

URL:	http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.100.047601
DOI:	10.1103/PhysRevLett.100.047601
PACS:	77.80.-e; 75.10.Pq; 75.80.+q; 77.22.Ej 77.80.-e Ferroelectricity and antiferroelectricity 75.10.Pq Spin chain models (magnetism) 75.80.+q Magnetomechanical and magnetoelectric effects, magnetostriction 77.22.Ej Dielectric polarization and depolarization YEAR: 2008