Please consider attending this seminar: MATERIALS ENGINEERING SEMINAR "Mechanisms Behind Magnetoelectric Multiferroic Thin Films" By Jianan Shen Purdue MSE Preliminary Exam Advisor: Professor Haiyan Wang ABSTRACT The phenomenon of multiferroics with simultaneous presence of two ferroic orderings has raised great interest over the past decades owing to their scientific and technological importance. Triggered by the discovery of the first multiferroic material, Ni3B7O13I, the search for multiferroic materials has expanded significantly. Although the pioneering work has been focusing on bulk multiferroic materials, multiferroic thin films have drawn increasing attention because of their promising potentials on device applications, such as multiferroic 4-state logic memories, magnetic field sensors, multiferroic tunneling junctions, magnetoelectric memories, etc. Multiferroic properties can be established on a single-phase material, and there are assorted mechanisms for single phase multiferroics. Nevertheless, the family of single-phase materials remains small due to the fundamental contradiction between the electron configuration of d orbitals in ferroelectricity and ferromagnetism, and they are not yet usable for practical applications due to the low remnant magnetization and weak magnetoelectric coupling between two orderings. Two-phase multiferroic nanocomposite combines ferroelectricity and ferromagnetism phase into one system and exhibits stronger magnetoelectric coupling through strain mediation, which makes it a more viable and reliable material candidate for practical applications. This review first introduces the history and background of multiferroics, then discusses different mechanisms of multiferroic thin films as well as their pros and cons, finally identifies the existing critical challenges, and proposes some future perspectives. Date: November 12, 2021 Time: 1:00 PM WebEx: https://purdue.webex.com/purdue/j.php?MTID=mebb8a27f8e85d4e3183689fa0ae42932 Yuan-Yu Karen Morgan,Ph.D. Academic Advisor-Graduate Program School of Materials Engineering Neil Armstrong Hall of Engineering, Room 2217 765-494-4103 ymorgan@purdue.edu<mailto:ymorgan@purdue.edu>