Silvia Picozzi - Multiferroicity and magnetoelectricity in the flatland

This talk was part of the Workshop on "Spin-Orbit Entangled Quantum Magnetism" held at the ESI September 23 -- 27, 2024.
Multiferroicity and magnetoelectricity (i.e. the coexistence and coupling between long-range magnetic and electric dipolar order) constitute two related landmark phenomena in quantum physics, where profound fundamental aspects (i.e. microscopic interactions between charge and spin degrees of freedom) are intimately related to technological milestones (multifunctional devices tuned by electric/magnetic fields). In this context, the reduction of dimensionality from 3D to 2D has been boosted by the recent discoveries of multiferroicity in NiI2 layers [1], driven by spin-orbit-coupling, obtained via a joint theory-experiments approach down to the single-layer limit. I will show several examples of first-principles modelling for multiferroic and magnetoelectric 2D-materials, including vanadium dihalide-monolayers and Mn-phosphochalcogenides, highlighting the role of spin-orbit interaction and the potentiality of cross-coupling phenomena in van der Waals materials.
References
[1] Song Q., Occhialini C.A., Ergecen E., Ilyas B., Amoroso D., Barone P., Kapeghian J., Watanabe K., Taniguchi T., Botana A., Picozzi S., Gedik N., Comin R., Evidence for a single-layer van der Waals multiferroic, Nature 602 (2022), 601