In a significant advancement within the fields of multiferroics and spintronics, the research team led by Associate Professor Tong Zhou from EIT has recently achieved a significant progress. The team has, for the first time, proposed a novel class of multiferroic systems—antiferroelectric altermagnets (AFEAM). Leveraging this new material platform, they have demonstrated highly efficient control of both magnetic order and spin polarization using external electric fields. This seminal work, entitled "Antiferroelectric Altermagnets: Antiferroelectricity Alters Magnets", has been published in the prestigious physics journal Physical Review Letters (PRL). Recognized for its high significance and potential impact, the paper was selected as an Editors' Suggestion and featured prominently on the PRL homepage. Furthermore, the research was highlighted by Physics, a scientific journal of the American Physical Society (APS), in a report titled "Altermagnets that Turn On and Off".
This work not only uncovers a fundamentally new magnetoelectric coupling mechanism in multiferroic systems but also establishes a novel paradigm for the electric-field manipulation of magnetic properties and spin states. These findings hold considerable promise for driving the development of next-generation, ultra-low-power spintronic devices, potentially leading to technological breakthroughs in information storage and technology.
Following its initial release on arXiv as a preprint in early October 2024 (originally submitted to PRL in early September), this research rapidly garnered widespread attention from both theoretical and experimental communities worldwide. Several research groups have already initiated experimental efforts to explore this system. Next week, Associate Professor Tong Zhou is scheduled to present the detailed research progress in an invited talk at the Global Physics Summit organized by the APS.
The paper's first author is Xunkai Duan, a Class of 2024 Ph.D. student in Professor Tong Zhou's group (co-advised in a joint training program with Shanghai Jiao Tong University). Postdoctoral Fellow Jiayong Zhang (co-advised in a joint training program with the University of Science and Technology of China) is a co-first author. Associate Professor Tong Zhou is the sole corresponding author. Other collaborators include Postdoctoral Fellow Ziye Zhu from the Zhou’s group, Professor Zhenyu Zhang from the University of Science and Technology of China, Professor Igor Žutić from the University at Buffalo, State University of New York, and Postdoctoral Fellow Yuntian Liu. The Eastern Institute of Technology, Ningbo is the primary affiliation for this work. This research was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Natural Science Foundation of Zhejiang Province, and the Ningbo Yongjiang Talent Program.
