Ferroelectricity is a characteristic of certain materials that have a spontaneous electric polarization that can be reversed by the application of an external electric field. All ferroelectrics are also piezoelectric and pyroelectric, with the additional property that their natural electrical polarization is reversible. The term is used in analogy to ferromagnetism, in which a material exhibits a permanent magnetic moment. Ferromagnetism was already known when ferroelectricity was discovered in 1920 in Rochelle salt by Joseph Valasek. Thus, the prefix ferro, meaning iron, was used to describe the property despite the fact that most ferroelectric materials do not contain iron. Materials that are both ferroelectric and ferromagnetic are known as multiferroics.
The French National Centre for Scientific Research is the French state research organisation and is the largest fundamental science agency in Europe.
Albert Fert is a French physicist and one of the discoverers of giant magnetoresistance which brought about a breakthrough in gigabyte hard disks. Currently, he is an emeritus professor at Paris-Saclay University in Orsay, scientific director of a joint laboratory between the Centre national de la recherche scientifique and Thales Group, and adjunct professor at Michigan State University. He was awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize in Physics together with Peter Grünberg.
Multiferroics are defined as materials that exhibit more than one of the primary ferroic properties in the same phase:
Bismuth ferrite (BiFeO3, also commonly referred to as BFO in materials science) is an inorganic chemical compound with perovskite structure and one of the most promising multiferroic materials. The room-temperature phase of BiFeO3 is classed as rhombohedral belonging to the space group R3c. It is synthesized in bulk and thin film form and both its antiferromagnetic (G type ordering) Néel temperature (approximately 653 K) and ferroelectric Curie temperature are well above room temperature (approximately 1100K). Ferroelectric polarization occurs along the pseudocubic direction () with a magnitude of 90–95 μC/cm2.
Neil David Mathur is a Professor in Materials Physics in the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy at the University of Cambridge.
The European Physical Society (EPS) is a non-profit organisation whose purpose is to promote physics and physicists in Europe through methods such as physics outreach. Formally established in 1968, its membership includes the national physical societies of 42 countries, and some 3200 individual members. The Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft, the world's largest and oldest organisation of physicists, is a major member.
Jeroen van den Brink is a theoretical condensed matter physicist, director at the Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research, IFW Dresden and professor at the Dresden University of Technology in Germany. Van den Brink is known for contributions to the field of strongly correlated materials, in particular for proposals on magnetic and orbital ordering, mechanisms for multiferroicity and the theory of Resonant Inelastic X-Ray Scattering (RIXS).
In its most general form, the magnetoelectric effect (ME) denotes any coupling between the magnetic and the electric properties of a material. The first example of such an effect was described by Wilhelm Röntgen in 1888, who found that a dielectric material moving through an electric field would become magnetized. A material where such a coupling is intrinsically present is called a magnetoelectric.
The EPS CMD Europhysics Prize is awarded since 1975 by the Condensed Matter Division of the European Physical Society, in recognition of recent work by one or more individuals, for scientific excellence in the area of condensed matter physics. It is one of Europe’s most prestigious prizes in the field of condensed matter physics. Several laureates of the EPS CMD Europhysics Prize also received a Nobel Prize in Physics or Chemistry.
The Laboratory of Solid State Physics (LPS) is a research institute of the Paris-Saclay University, associated to the National Center of Scientific Research (CNRS) as a joint research unit. It is located in Orsay, France, about 25 km southwest of Paris.
Ramamoorthy Ramesh is an American materials scientist of Indian descent who has contributed to the synthesis, assembly and understanding of complex functional oxides. In particular, he has worked on the fundamental science and technology translation of ferroelectric perovskites, manganites with colossal magnetoresistance, and multiferroic oxides with potential benefits for modern information technologies. To date, Ramesh has >675 publications with >100,000 citations, resulting in an h-index >150. He was named Citation Laureate for his research on multiferroics (2014).
Claudia Felser is a German solid state chemist and materials scientist. She is currently a director of the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids. Felser was elected as a member into the National Academy of Engineering in 2020 for the prediction and discovery of engineered quantum materials ranging from Heusler compounds to topological insulators.
A complex oxide is a chemical compound that contains oxygen and at least two other elements. Complex oxide materials are notable for their wide range of magnetic and electronic properties, such as ferromagnetism, ferroelectricity, and high-temperature superconductivity. These properties often come from their strongly correlated electrons in d or f orbitals.
Nicola Ann Spaldin FRS is professor of materials science at ETH Zurich, known for her pioneering research on multiferroics.
Sinéad Majella Griffin is an Irish physicist working at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory on condensed matter physics and materials science. She won the 2017 Swiss Physical Society Award in General Physics.
Julia Mundy is an American experimental condensed matter physicist. She was awarded the 2019 George E. Valley Jr. Prize by the American Physical Society (APS) for "the pico-engineering and synthesis of the first room-temperature magnetoelectric multi-ferroic material." This prize recognizes an "individual in the early stages of his or her career for an outstanding scientific contribution to physics that is deemed to have significant potential for a dramatic impact on the field." She is an assistant professor of physics at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Julie Grollier is a French physicist working in the field of spintronics.
Bernard Dieny is a research scientist and an entrepreneur. He is Chief Scientist at SPINTEC, a CEA/CNRS/UGA research laboratory that he co-founded in 2002 in Grenoble, France. He is also co-founder of two startup companies: Crocus Technology on MRAM and magnetic sensors in 2006 and EVADERIS on circuits design in 2014.
Elbio Rubén Dagotto is an Argentinian-American theoretical physicist and academic. He is a distinguished professor in the department of physics and astronomy at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and Distinguished Scientist in the Materials Science and Technology Division at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
