Valdirlei F. Freitas, Taiana G. M. Bonadio, Gustavo S. Dias, Otávio A. Protzek, Antonio Medina Neto, Luiz F. Cótica, Ivair A. Santos, Ducinei Garcia e José A. Eiras

JOURNAL OF APPLIED PHYSICS – Volume: 113; Issue: 11; Article Number: 114105; DOI: 10.1063/1.4795766

In this paper, the microscopic mechanism for structural, ferroelectric, and magnetic stabilities in displacive perovskite structured multiferroics is investigated by studying BiFeO₃-PbTiO₃ solid solutions. The results revealed that thermal stability and ferroic orders are intimately connected with the changes in A and B perovskite sites. The breakdown mechanism of the cycloidal magnetic network, which permits to observe the resulting macroscopic magnetization is reveled, compared, and presented for various compositions of the BiFeO₃-PbTiO₃ system. The delicate energetic balance that stabilizes the electrically polar structures in displacive perovskitemultiferroics is proposed and it was showed that it is fully connected to the configuration (atomic occupancy and formal ionic charge) of each individual site of the perovskite unit cell.

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