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Cupric oxide as an induced-multiferroic with high-TC

Nature Materials volume 7, pages 291–294 (2008)Cite this article

Abstract

Materials that combine coupled electric and magnetic dipole order are termed ‘magnetoelectric multiferroics’1,2,3,4. In the past few years, a new class of such materials, ‘induced-multiferroics’, has been discovered5,6, wherein non-collinear spiral magnetic order breaks inversion symmetry, thus inducing ferroelectricity7,8,9. Spiral magnetic order often arises from the existence of competing magnetic interactions that reduce the ordering temperature of a more conventional collinear phase10. Hence, spiral-phase-induced ferroelectricity tends to exist only at temperatures lower than ∼40 K. Here, we propose that copper(II) oxides (containing Cu2+ ions) having large magnetic superexchange interactions11 can be good candidates for induced-multiferroics with high Curie temperature (TC). In fact, we demonstrate ferroelectricity with TC=230 K in cupric oxide, CuO (tenorite), which is known as a starting material for the synthesis of high-Tc (critical temperature) superconductors. Our result provides an important contribution to the search for high-temperature magnetoelectric multiferroics.

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Figure 1: Principal superexchange interaction J as a function of Cu–O–Cu bond angle φ for various low-dimensional cuprates.
Figure 2: Dielectric anomalies at magnetic phase transitions in CuO.
Figure 3: Electric polarization along the b* axis as a function of temperature for a CuO crystal.
Figure 4: Electric polarization hysteresis in CuO.

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Acknowledgements

We thank H. Mukuda and M. Hagiwara for their help in electric measurements, and H. Fujiwara for his help in X-ray diffraction measurements. This work was supported by the 21st Century COE Program (G18) of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Materials Physics, Graduate School of Engineering Science, Osaka University, Toyonaka, Osaka 560-8531, Japan

    T. Kimura, Y. Sekio & H. Nakamura

  2. Bell Laboratories, Alcatel-Lucent, 600 Mountain Avenue, Murray Hill, New Jersey 07974, USA

    T. Siegrist & A. P. Ramirez

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  1. T. Kimura
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Correspondence to T. Kimura.

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Kimura, T., Sekio, Y., Nakamura, H. et al. Cupric oxide as an induced-multiferroic with high-TC. Nature Mater 7, 291–294 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat2125

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