Novel multiferroicity in orthorhombic SmCrO3

• Main Authors: Zhongcheng Xiang, Jianxun Xu, Yunxia Huang, Shuaipeng Ge, Yimin Cui
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier 2018-10-01
• Series: Progress in Natural Science: Materials International
• Online Access: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1002007118303939

This paper reports the ferroelectricity in antiferromagnetic SmCrO3 with a reasonably large value of spontaneous electric polarization (70 μC/cm2 mC cm−2 at 50 K) based on the measurement of pyroelectric current. The experimental results showed that the temperature of the onset of polar order was evidently higher (about 220 K) than the Neel temperature (TN =197 K) in the magnetodielectric studies. The calculated magnetodielectric effect (MDE) value was explicitly negative with maximum | MDE | values of about 3.6% around 230 K. The absence of a convincing signature in MDE at antiferromagnetic ordering temperature TN indicated the absence of magnetoelectric coupling around this temperature regime. The results further confirmed that the onset of polar order can be attributed to the structural distortion, rather than the canted noncollinear magnetic structure.