Suppression of ferroelectric polarization and hence room temperature multiferroicity of LuFeO3 on Cu and Mn doping

Room temperature multiferroicity has been in the centre of interest for last few years due to its enormous potential to be applied as real multifunctional device. LuFeO3 is a potential candidate as room temperature multiferroic1, which offers strong multiferroic coupling at room temperature [1]. Presence of ferroelectric polarization is observed in Mn-doped LuFeO3 also. The main area of restriction is its low polarization, which is to be improved before it can be applied in real devices. In order to do that proper understanding of the mechanism of generation of ferroelectricity is needed. In order to do that we observed that, the ferroelectric and multiferroic properties at room temperature, in orthorhombic distorted perovskite LuFeO3 are greatly affected by Cu or Mn doping. If we replace Fe+3 ion (Ionic Radius=126) with some amount another ion of increasing ionic radius Mn+2 (Ionic Radius=127) and Cu+2 (Ionic Radius = 128) the ferroelectric properties are greatly affected as evidenced by the P-E Hysteresis loop measurements. The appearance of ferroelectricity in LuFeO3 could be attributed to the spin current based model as proposed by katsura et al. [3]. The effect of Cu and Mn doping also can be explained with the Spin current based model [3]. Copyright © 2017 VBRI Press.