Robustness of magnetic and electric domains against charge carrier doping in multiferroic hexagonal ErMnO3

Abstract

We investigate the effect of chemical doping on the electric and magnetic domain pattern in multiferroic hexagonal ErMnO _3 . Hole- and electron doping are achieved through the growth of Er _1− _x Ca _x MnO _3 and Er _1− _x Zr _x MnO _3 single crystals, which allows for a controlled introduction of divalent and tetravalent ions, respectively. Using conductance measurements, piezoresponse force microscopy and nonlinear optics we study doping-related variations in the electronic transport and image the corrsponding ferroelectric and antiferromagnetic domains. We find that moderate doping levels allow for adjusting the electronic conduction properties of ErMnO _3 without destroying its characteristic domain patterns. Our findings demonstrate the feasibility of chemical doping for non-perturbative property-engineering of intrinsic domain states in this important class of multiferroics.

Keywords

• multiferroics
• domain engineering
• piezoresponse force microscopy
• second harmonic generation