Engineering Domain Walls and Planar Rumpling to Create a Room-Temperature Multiferroic

Condensed Matter Seminars

Speaker: Julia Mundy, UC Berkeley
Date & Time: November 5, 2015, 2:00 - 3:00
Location: Hennings 318
Local Contact: Jenny Hoffman
Intended Audience: Graduate

Unusual electronic properties arise at interfaces in materials with strongly correlated electrons due to the low local symmetry combined with the sensitivity of these materials to geometric confinement, electrostatics and strain. In addition to heterointerfaces, domain walls in ferroics can exhibit properties that are markedly different than the parent material. These topological defects and their motion enables many useful attributes, e.g., memories that can be reversibly written between stable states as well as enhanced conductivity, permittivity, permeability, and piezoelectricity. Although methods are known to drastically increase their density, the placement of domain walls with atomic precision has until now evaded control. Using a combination of thin film deposition and advanced electron microscopy, we engineer the location of domain walls with monolayer precision and exploit this ability to create a novel multiferroic in which ferroelectricity enhances magnetism at all relevant length scales.