title: Magnetoelectric relaxor and reentrant behaviours in multiferroic Pb(Fe2/3W1/3)O3 crystal.
abstract: Significant quenched disorder in crystal structure can break ferroic (magnetic or electric) long-range order, resulting in the development of ferroic glassy states at low temperatures such as magnetic spin glasses, electric dipolar glasses, relaxor ferroelectrics, etc. These states have been widely studied due to novel physical phenomena they reveal. Much less known are the effects of quenched disorder in multiferroics, i.e. the materials where magnetic and electric correlations coexist. Here we report an unusual behaviour in complex perovskite Pb(Fe2/3W1/3)O3 (PFW) crystals: the coexistence of electric relaxor, magnetic relaxor and antiferromagnetic (AFM) states. The most striking finding is the transformation of the AFM phase into a new reentrant-type magnetic glassy phase below Tg ≅ 10 K. We show that the behaviour at this transformation contrasts the typical behaviour of canonical spin glasses and is similar to the behaviour of relaxor ferroelectrics. Magnetoelectric effect is also observed in the AFM phase in the temperature range of the transition into electric relaxor phase at Tf ≅ 200. The mechanism of magnetic relaxor behaviour is supposed to arise from the frustrated interactions among the spins located at the AFM domain walls. Our results should inspire further studies of multirelaxor behaviour in other multiferroic systems.
authors.affiliation: Electronic Materials Research Laboratory, Key Laboratory of the Ministry of Education &International Center for Dielectric Research, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, China.|Department of Chemistry and 4D LABS, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, V5A 1S6, Canada.|School of Mathematics and Physics, China University of Geosciences (Wuhan), Wuhan 430074, P.R. China.
authors.forename: Ling
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry and 4D LABS, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, V5A 1S6, Canada.
authors.forename: Alexei A
authors.initials: AA
authors.lastname: Bokov
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry and 4D LABS, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, V5A 1S6, Canada.
authors.forename: Weimin
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry and 4D LABS, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, V5A 1S6, Canada.|Department of Applied Physics, Donghua University, Songjiang District, 201620 Shanghai, P.R. China.
authors.forename: Hua
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.affiliation: Electronic Materials Research Laboratory, Key Laboratory of the Ministry of Education &International Center for Dielectric Research, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, China.|Department of Chemistry and 4D LABS, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, V5A 1S6, Canada.
authors.forename: Jian
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zhuang
authors.affiliation: Electronic Materials Research Laboratory, Key Laboratory of the Ministry of Education &International Center for Dielectric Research, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, China.|Department of Chemistry and 4D LABS, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, V5A 1S6, Canada.
authors.forename: Nan
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry and 4D LABS, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, V5A 1S6, Canada.
authors.forename: Hamel N
authors.initials: HN
authors.lastname: Tailor
authors.affiliation: Electronic Materials Research Laboratory, Key Laboratory of the Ministry of Education &International Center for Dielectric Research, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, China.
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Ren
authors.affiliation: Electronic Materials Research Laboratory, Key Laboratory of the Ministry of Education &International Center for Dielectric Research, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, China.|Department of Chemistry and 4D LABS, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, V5A 1S6, Canada.
authors.forename: Zuo-Guang
authors.initials: ZG
authors.lastname: Ye