A paper recently published in Applied Physics Letters presents a promising approach for obtaining a large magnetoelectric response at room temperature in single-phase materials making use of phase-change phenomena at structural instabilities of a multiferroic state. BiFeO3–PbTiO3 perovskite shows the morphotropic phase boundary (MPB) between ferroelectric polymorphs with differentiated magnetic orderings. Indeed, distinctive magnetoelectric effects were recently shown in Mn-modified BiFeO3–PbTiO3, associated with the electric field-induced phase transition between the coexisting MPB phases. In this report analogous effects under the magnetic field in 0.7BiFeO3–0.3PbTiO3 sheds light on the reversibility of the phase-change phenomena and the role of the magnetic ordering in the phase coexistence at the structural instability characteristic of the MPB. Results demonstrate magnetic field-driven phase-change phenomena.

Role of magnetic ordering in the phase coexistence at the structural instability of the multiferroic BiFeO3–PbTiO3
C.M. Fernandez-Posada, A. Castro, R.P. del Real, M. Algueró, H. Amorín
Applied Physics Letters 118, 052901 (2021)