(National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, Department of Physics, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, People Republic of China.)
Keywords:
-
CLC:
PACS:
-
DOI:
10.7502/j.issn.1674-3962.2013.02.02
DocumentCode:
Abstract:
The single-phase multiferroics is a kind of functional material, in which the coexisting ferromagnetic and ferroelectric properties couple each other. Due to themagnetoelectric coupling effect, the magnetic(ferroelectric) properties can be controlled by external electric(magnetic) field. Furthermore, this couplingmakes it possible to design some new functional devices, such as hypersensitive sensors，electric-writing and magnetic-reading technique, high density four-state storage，and low-power logic devices. According to the origin of the ferroelectricity, the single-phase multiferroics can be classified to type-I and type-II. In type-I multiferroics, theferroelectricity and magnetism have different origins and the coupling effect between them is always weak. In type-II multiferroics,the ferroelectricity is arisen from the special spin configuration, namely magnetically- driven-ferroelectricity. As a typical type-II multiferroics, hexaferrites were investigated intensively in the last decades. This paper presents the recent research progress of multiferroic hexaferrites. The origin of ferroelectric order, the mechanism of the magnetoelectric coupling and the functional application of hexaferrites are introduced and discussed. Finally, the future development of the multiferroic hexaferrites is proposed