Spin-driven ferroelectricity in the multiferroic compounds of RMn2O5

Neutron diffraction studies under magnetic field as well as under hydrostatic pressure for microscopic magnetism on multiferroic RMn2O5 ( R rare-earth, Bi, and Y) are reviewed to discuss about the relevance between the magnetic property and dielectric property in detail. Without any external fields, a series of RMn2O5 shows successive magnetic phase transitions of incommensurate-commensurate-incommensurate as temperature decreases, in which the dielectric phase transitions concomitantly occur. At the lowest temperature phase of HoMn2O5, the magnetic transition from the incommensurate phase to the commensurate one is induced by applying both magnetic field and hydrostatic pressure. At this field-induced magnetic transition, a spontaneous electric polarization simultaneously induced, indicating that the ferroelectricity in this material is magnetically controlled. Competition of multiple magnetic ground states due to intensional magnetic frustration in this system can be easily tuned by applying external fields, which give rise to the rich variety of spin-driven dielectric transitions. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.