Magnetism and Magnetodielectricity

Transition-metal oxides are often found at the forefront of discovery in the pursuit of exotic functional properties because their unpaired electrons exhibit strong correlations that produce cooperative behavior that, despite decades of intensive study, is still poorly understood. Determining what governs these correlations and how they can be controlled is vital for enhancing a wide variety of functional electronic properties like superconductivity, magnetoresistance, and metal-insulator transitions. Our group has a specific interest in magnetoelectric multiferroics, which exhibit a cross-coupling that allows for the control of electrical polarizations using magnetic fields or, correspondingly, the orientation of magnetic moment using applied voltages. While uncommon in nature, the development of single-phase multiferroics with strong coupling at room temperature would pave the way for unprecedented new technologies in the form of cryogen-free magnetic field sensors and new low energy data-storage methods. Our work in this area is focused on understanding and developing methods to manipulate the magnetic order of complex oxides with the goal of designing materials that adopt non-collinear magnetic order as a route to new multiferroics. 

Publications

J. Milam-Guerrero et al. Influence of the Cubic Sublattice on Magnetic Coupling Between the Tetrahedral Sites of Garnet Inorganic Chemistry 60 (2021) 8500–8506 [doi]

J. Milam-Guerrero et al. Canting of the magnetic moments on the octahedral site of an iron oxide garnet in response to diamagnetic cation substitution Inorganic Chemistry 60 (2021) 6249–6254 [doi]

J. Milam-Guerrero et al. Crystal Chemistry and Competing Magnetic Exchange Interactions in Oxide Garnets and Spinels Journal of Solid State Chemistry 274 (2019) 1–9 [doi]

Neer et al. Ising-like antiferromagnetism on the octahedral sublattice of a cobalt-containing garnet and the potential for quantum criticality Phys. Rev. B 95, (2017) 144419 [doi]