Multiferroic phase of doped delafossite CuFeO2 identified using inelastic neutron scattering
- ORNL
- Osaka University
Multiferroic materials allow the electric polarization to be controlled by switching the direction of magnetic ordering and consequently offer prospects for many new technological applications [1 4]. Because multiferroic behavior has been found in materials that exhibit complex (non-collinear and incommensurate) magnetic order, it is essential to know the spin arrangement of the ground states in these materials [4 9]. In many cases, elastic neutron scattering measurements alone are not sufficient to distinguish among several potential complex magnetic states. We report inelastic neutron scattering (INS) measurements that provide a distinct dynamical fingerprint for the multiferroic ground state of 3.5% Ga-doped CuFeO2. The complex ground state is stabilized by the displacement of the oxygen atoms [10], which are also responsible for the multiferroic coupling predicted by Arima [8]. By comparing the observed and calculated spectrum of spin excitations, we conclude that the magnetic ground state is a distorted screwtype spin configuration. The exchange interactions that stabilize this structure are consistent with those obtained from inelastic measurements [11, 12] on undoped CuFeO2.
- Research Organization:
- Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) Program
- DOE Contract Number:
- DE-AC05-00OR22725
- OSTI ID:
- 986795
- Journal Information:
- Physical Review B, Vol. 82, Issue 2; ISSN 1098-0121
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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