Growth and characterization of the electronic structure of oxides multiferroics heterostructures

Abstract

Multiferroic oxides attracted the scientific community attention due to the interaction between their dielectric and magnetic properties. Macroscopically, this interaction allows to change the magnetic State of a sample applying an external electrical field, or conversely, to control the polarization State using external magnetic fields. These properties have a tremendous potential for applications, including in the field of non-volatile information storage media. On the other hand up to the moment there is no multiferroic material suitable for practical applications and in order to improve their properties one needs to understand the microscopic principies behind the interaction between the dielectric and magnetic degrees of freedom. With this project we start a new research group within the Laboratório Nacional de Luz Sincrotron (Synchrotron National Light Laboratory, LNLS), specialized in the study of multiferroic materials by means of a variety of X-ray spectroscopy techniques. The main goal of this proposal is to establish a research team capable of growing and characterize multiferroic and ferroelectric containing thin films. In view of that, we propose a set of instruments that will allow the full description of the electronic structure of the studied materials. The implementation of the proposed infrastructure will turn the LNLS extremely competitive in the international scenario, not only within the multiferroic community, but also in several other research fields, once that the full system will be available to the LNLS users community in the present machine, and later on the future synchrotron SIRIUS. (AU)