Local ferroelectricity at the domain walls and stripe domain heads in iron garnet films

ABSTRACT

The concept of local ferroelectricity discussed in this paper belongs to the emerging field of ultrathin multiferroics. The idea of the ferroelectric polarization associated with the domain walls in magnets proposed by V.G. Bar'yakhtar et al. more than thirty years ago has recently got experimental evidence including electric field driven magnetic domain wall motion and electric field induced Stark shift in the single molecule microscopy. The special attention is paid here to the magnetoelectric properties of dislocation in stripe domain structure (i.e. the stripe domain heads) that differ considerably from the ones of straight domain wall segments. It is shown that the electric field induced displacement of the domain wall can be increased by an order of value with external constant magnetic field.

KEYWORDS:

• Magnetoelectric effect
• multiferroics
• micromagnetics
• flexomagnetoelectric effect

Funding

The work is supported by Russian Foundation for Basic Researchers, grant RFBR # 16-02-00494 a and RFBR # 14-29-08216 ofi_m.