Realizing Magnetoelectric Coupling with Hydroxide as a Knob

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that hydrogen intercalation in antiferromagnetic oxides like SrCoO2.5 can induce strong magnetoelectric coupling at room temperature, offering a new approach to designing multiferroic materials.

Contribution

It introduces hydrogen intercalation as a novel method to achieve room-temperature multiferroics with strong magnetoelectric coupling in transition metal oxides.

Findings

Hydrogen intercalation induces ferrimagnetism and electric polarization in SrCoO2.5.

Hydroxide acts as a control knob for magnetization and polarization.

Ion intercalation can be a general strategy for designing magnetoelectric materials.

Abstract

Materials with a coexistence of magnetic and ferroelectric order (i.e., multiferroics) provide an efficient route for the control of magnetism by electric fields. Unfortunately, a long-sought room temperature multiferroic with strongly coupled ferroelectric and ferromagnetic (or ferrimagnetic) orderings is still lacking. Here, we propose that hydrogen intercalation in antiferromagnetic transition metal oxides is a promising way to realize multiferroics with strong magnetoelectric coupling. Taking brownmillerite SrCoO2.5 as an example, we show that hydrogen intercalated SrCoO2.5 displays strong ferrimagnetism and large electric polarization in which the hydroxide acts as a new knob to simultaneously control the magnetization and polarization at room temperature. We expect that ion intercalation will become a general way to design magnetoelectric and spintronic functional materials.