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Updated: May 25, 2026

Angle-resolved Photoemission Spectroscopy At Ultra-low Temperatures
Published on: October 9, 2012
A polar corundum oxide displaying weak ferromagnetism at room temperature
Man-Rong Li1, Umut Adem, Sean R C McMitchell
1Department of Chemistry, University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 7ZD, UK.
Abstract:
Combining long-range magnetic order with polarity in the same structure is a prerequisite for the design of (magnetoelectric) multiferroic materials. There are now several demonstrated strategies to achieve this goal, but retaining magnetic order above room temperature remains a difficult target. Iron oxides in the +3 oxidation state have high magnetic ordering temperatures due to the size of the coupled moments. Here we prepare and characterize ScFeO(3) (SFO), which under pressure and in strain-stabilized thin films adopts a polar variant of the corundum structure, one of the archetypal binary oxide structures. Polar corundum ScFeO(3) has a weak ferromagnetic ground state below 356 K-this is in contrast to the purely antiferromagnetic ground state adopted by the well-studied ferroelectric BiFeO(3).
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