Full text
| |
| Author(s): |
Carla Azimonte Bottan
Total Authors: 1
|
| Document type: | Doctoral Thesis |
| Press: | Campinas, SP. |
| Institution: | Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Física Gleb Wataghin |
| Defense date: | 2009-08-05 |
| Examining board members: |
Eduardo Granado Monteiro da Silva;
Abner de Siervo;
Carlos Manuel Giles Antunez de Mayolo;
Flávio Garcia;
Sergio Luiz Morelhão
|
| Advisor: | Eduardo Granado Monteiro da Silva |
| Abstract | |
In this doctoral thesis, different techniques were employed to study the correlations between electrical, magnetic and crystalline properties in some transition metal oxides of current interest, such as the double perovskite family A2FeReO6 (A = Ba, Ca) and the multiferroic DyMn2O5. These materials offer extraordinary potential for the application and optimization of new devices based on ferroelectric and ferromagnetic related materials. X-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD), x-ray diffraction and dc-magnetization measurements were performed. These data, associated with previous neutron results and band structure calculations, show an incipient orbital order in half-metallic Ba2FeReO6 where the conduction electrons are in the proximity of a metal-insulator transition. For the Ca2FeReO6 compound, the combination of these techniques provided insight into the metal-insulator transition (TMI ~ 150K), leading to the proposal of a new mechanism for this type of transition, according to which a competition between a double-exchange-like collinear state and a localized non-collinear state stabilized by the Re magnetocrystaline energy takes place. In the multiferroic DyMn2O5, anomalous x-ray diffraction experiments with the application of electric fields, and an interpretation based on Friedel pairs theory, allowed us to see, for the first time, the experimental confirmation of Mn ferroelectric atomic displacements in this structure leading to the ferroelectricity, so far unidentified by conventional x-ray diffraction and neutron diffraction experiments. In summary, the research described in this thesis was focused in the study of the magnetocrystalline and magnetoelectric coupling in half-metallic materials with tunneling magnetoresistance, as well as in multiferroics. Further development of this area is a basic and necessary condition to bring life to a new generation of devices related to spintronics (AU) | |