Disorder and epitaxial strain control of metamagnetic transition, large saturation magnetization, and magneto-terahertz properties of YMn0.5Cr0.5O3 polycrystals and thin films

The multiferroic YMn0.5Cr0.5O3 (YMCO) compound possesses magnetic phases that are debatable for their origin in intrinsic and extrinsic attributes. To extract the contribution of the polycrystalline disorder as well as determine the effect of structural modifications and epitaxial strain on the magnetic properties, we have formed YMCO bulk in polycrystalline pellet and powder forms, and epitaxial thin films with a wide range of compressive and tensile strains. The temperature and field dependent magnetization of polycrystals discards the possibility of magnetization reversal and unveils the presence of multidomain states with soft and hard characters in powder form. The epitaxial YMCO films possess an extraordinary structural control of their magnetic properties, as the tuning of compressive strain results in an increase of 4–5 factors of magnitude in the saturation magnetic moment. This strain engineering further allows a tuning of the magnetic property from spin frustration/short-range ordering to the long-range ordering, which also induces a rare phenomenon of sharp step-like metamagnetic transition. The implementation of magneto-terahertz time-domain spectroscopy on this system does not show the manifestation of any magnon/electromaganon resonance typical of a magnetoelectric phase, thus suggesting either a very weak or lack of coupling between magnetic and electric ordered parameters in polycrystalline YMCO. This study resolves some longstanding issues on the magnetic and magnetoelectric phases in addition to the epitaxial control of large magnetization and metamagnetic transition being potentially relevant in several aspects of spintronics applications.