Multiferroic RMnO3 thin films

TL;DR

This paper reviews the progress in the growth, characterization, and understanding of multiferroic RMnO3 thin films, highlighting their potential for future applications and the challenges faced in their development.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of recent advancements in the synthesis and properties of RMnO3 thin films, emphasizing their multiferroic coupling mechanisms and application prospects.

Findings

Successful growth of hexagonal and orthorhombic RMnO3 thin films

Mimicking bulk properties in thin film form

Identification of challenges and future research directions

Abstract

Multiferroic materials have received an astonishing attention in the last decades due to expectations that potential coupling between distinct ferroic orders could inspire new applications and new device concepts. As a result, a new knowledge on coupling mechanisms and materials science has dramatically emerged. Multiferroic RMnO3 perovskites are central to this progress providing a suitable platform to tailor spin-spin and spin-lattice interactions. With views towards applications, development of thin films of multiferroic materials have also progressed enormously and nowadays thin film manganites are available with properties mimicking those of bulk compounds. Here we review achievements on the growth and characterization of magnetic and ferroelectric properties of hexagonal and orthorhombic RMnO3 epitaxial thin films, discuss some challenging issues and we suggest some guidelines for future research and developments.