Colossal magnetostriction effect in rare-earth orthoferrites
Abstract
Within the entire gamut of magnetostrictive, piezomagnetic, and ferromagnetic shape memory alloy systems, the striction effect is found to vary from a few tens of parts per million to a few percent. Here, we report the observation of an unprecedentedly large magnetic-field-induced lattice strain along the c axis (more than 60-100% at 90 kOe field) in single crystals of orthorhombic RFeO3 (R = Dy, Ho) below their spin-reorientation transition temperature TSR. However, the striction effect is two orders of magnitude smaller along the a and b axes. Like magnetostriction, the magnetodielectric effect is highly anisotropic and very large along the c axis. Such gigantic striction and dielectric effects along the c axis arise as a result of a magnetic-field-induced first-order structural phase transition which possibly stems from large spin-orbit coupling (and, thereby, enormous magnetocrystalline anisotropy). The observed colossal striction in rare-earth orthoferrites could open new opportunities for applications requiring large, reversible magnetic-field-induced strain.
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BibTeX
@misc{das2026colossal,
title = {{Colossal magnetostriction effect in rare-earth orthoferrites}},
author = {Moumita Das and Arup Ghosh and Moumita Nandi and Arumugam Thamizhavel and Dipten Bhattacharya and Prabhat Mandal},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.14731},
eprint = {2609.14731},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.14731},
note = {CC BY-NC-ND 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Colossal magnetostriction effect in rare-earth orthoferrites
AU - Moumita Das
AU - Arup Ghosh
AU - Moumita Nandi
AU - Arumugam Thamizhavel
AU - Dipten Bhattacharya
AU - Prabhat Mandal
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/13
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.14731
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.14731
AB - Within the entire gamut of magnetostrictive, piezomagnetic, and ferromagnetic shape memory alloy systems, the striction effect is found to vary from a few tens of parts per million to a few percent. Here, we report the observation of an unprecedentedly large magnetic-field-induced lattice strain along the c axis (more than 60-100% at 90 kOe field) in single crystals of orthorhombic RFeO_3 (R = Dy, Ho) below their spin-reorientation transition temperature T_SR. However, the striction effect is two orders of magnitude smaller along the a and b axes. Like magnetostriction, the magnetodielectric effect is highly anisotropic and very large along the c axis. Such gigantic striction and dielectric effects along the c axis arise as a result of a magnetic-field-induced first-order structural phase transition which possibly stems from large spin-orbit coupling (and, thereby, enormous magnetocrystalline anisotropy). The observed colossal striction in rare-earth orthoferrites could open new opportunities for applications requiring large, reversible magnetic-field-induced strain.
ER -