Multiferroicity in the YFeO3 crystal

In this paper, orthoferrite YFeO3 was synthesized by hydrothermal method. The space group of YFeO3 is Pnma and the spin state of Fe3+ ion is low spin (LS). The YFeO3 crystal exhibits a weak antiferromagnetic behavior by magnetic measurement. For the electrical polarization measurement, micron-scale Pt electrodes were deposited on the both sides of the YFeO3 crystal by FIB-induced deposition. The saturation polarization value is 0.1994 mu C/cm(2 )at room temperature. The crystal exhibits ferroelectric behavior through the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction induced by additional spin canting of the antiferromagnetic ordering. This work may be applied to further study of the multiferroicity in rare-earth orthoferrites RFeO3.