The existence and origin of field-induced ferrimagnetic order transition of LuFe2O4 single crystal

Abstract The magnetic characteristics of LuFe2O4 have been investigated in detail; however, only a few studies have been conducted on the microscopic origins of magnetic field-induced ferrimagnetic transition, and the magnetic coupling between ferrimagnetic domains is still unclear. Especially, because the LuFe2O4 ferrimagnetic transition field is too high for commercial instruments, it is very difficult to directly observe the change in ferrimagnetic domains at lower temperatures by magnetic imaging in real space. In this study, the ferrimagnetic transition was measured using a self-made high field magnetic force microscopy. In addition, magnetization, magnetoelastic, and magnetothermal behavior of the single crystal of LuFe2O4 were investigated. The experimental results show that at lower temperatures (far lower than the ferrimagnetic ordering temperature, TC = 240 K), when the critical field is about ~13.5 T (at 2 K), the ferrimagnetic domain is long-range ordered and stable within the magnetic field below 55 T. The magnetoelastic and magnetothermal effects were observed with field-induced ferrimagnetic transition. The change in the ferrimagnetic moment realignment driven by the magnetic field was proposed, which will lead to the change of ferrimagnetic order, magnetoelasticity, and the multiferroicity behavior.