Direct atomic scale determination of magnetic ion partition in a room temperature multiferroic material

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Date
2017-05-11
Authors
Keeney, Lynette
Downing, Clive
Schmidt, Michael
Pemble, Martyn E.
Nicolosi, Valeria
Whatmore, Roger W.
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Publisher
Springer Nature
Published Version
10.1038/s41598-017-01902-1
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Abstract
The five-layer Aurivillius phase Bi6TixFeyMnzO18 system is a rare example of a single-phase room temperature multiferroic material. To optimise its properties and exploit it for future memory storage applications, it is necessary to understand the origin of the room temperature magnetisation. In this work we use high resolution scanning transmission electron microscopy, EDX and EELS to discover how closely-packed Ti/Mn/Fe cations of similar atomic number are arranged, both within the perfect structure and within defect regions. Direct evidence for partitioning of the magnetic cations (Mn and Fe) to the central three of the five perovskite (PK) layers is presented, which reveals a marked preference for Mn to partition to the central layer. We infer this is most probably due to elastic strain energy considerations. The observed increase (>8%) in magnetic cation content at the central PK layers engenders up to a 90% increase in potential ferromagnetic spin alignments in the central layer and this could be significant in terms of creating pathways to the long-range room temperature magnetic order observed in this distinct and intriguing material system.
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Keywords
Site percolation thresholds , Aurivillius phase , Thin films , Complex neighborhoods , Lattice site , Oxides , Ferroelectrics , Stabilization , Bi5FeTI3O15 , Morphology
Citation
Keeney, L., Downing, C., Schmidt, M., Pemble, M. E., Nicolosi, V. and Whatmore, R. W. (2017) 'Direct atomic scale determination of magnetic ion partition in a room temperature multiferroic material', Scientific Reports, 7, 1737, (11 pp). doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-01902-1
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https://hdl.handle.net/10468/7697
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Tyndall National Institute - Journal Articles
Chemistry - Journal Articles
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© The Author(s) 2017. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.