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Updated: Mar 18, 2026

Measuring Magnetically-Tuned Ferroelectric Polarization in Liquid Crystals
Published on: August 15, 2018
Thermodynamics of multicaloric effects in multiferroic materials: application to metamagnetic shape-memory alloys and
Antoni Planes1, Teresa Castán2, Avadh Saxena3
1Departament d'Estructura i Constituents de la Matèria, Facultat de Física, Universitat de Barcelona, Diagonal 647, 08028 Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain toni@ecm.ub.edu.
Abstract:
We develop a general thermodynamic framework to investigate multicaloric effects in multiferroic materials. This is applied to the study of both magnetostructural and magnetoelectric multiferroics. Landau models with appropriate interplay between the corresponding ferroic properties (order parameters) are proposed for metamagnetic shape-memory and ferrotoroidic materials, which, respectively, belong to the two classes of multiferroics. For each ferroic property, caloric effects are quantified by the isothermal entropy change induced by the application of the corresponding thermodynamically conjugated field. The multicaloric effect is obtained as a function of the two relevant applied fields in each class of multiferroics. It is further shown that multicaloric effects comprise the corresponding contributions from caloric effects associated with each ferroic property and the cross-contribution arising from the interplay between these ferroic properties.This article is part of the themed issue 'Taking the temperature of phase transitions in cool materials'.
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