Magnetism and Archaeology: Magnetic Oxides in the First American Civilization

4 SCIENTIFIC HIGHLIGHT OF THE MONTH First-principles design of magnetic oxides

We present an efficient methodology for the computational design of structural, electronic and magnetic properties of complex magnetic oxides. Our approach combines several complementary first-principles methods rooted in density functional theory. The optimization of atomic positions and the optimization of the crystalline structure is achieved by means of pseudopotential methods, known for yi...

Magnetism without magnetic impurities in oxides ZrO2 and TiO2

The strange magnetism of oxides and carbons.

Magnetism is not usually expected in simple sp oxides like MgO or in carbons like graphite. Yet basic intrinsic defects in these systems can be magnetic in ways that seem to be shared by more complex oxides. A second puzzle comes from reports of possible room temperature ferromagnetism in simple oxides, where experiments are not always in agreement. This paper discusses what determines whether ...

Design Strategy and Prediction of New Room Temperature Magnetoelectric Multiferroics

Perovskite ABO3 oxides display many promising functional properties including ferroelectricity and magnetism. An ongoing challenge has been to design and synthesize materials in which ferroelectric and magnetic orderings not only coexist in a single phase above room temperature, but also are nontrivially coupled. Such a cross coupling between these different ferroic orderings could lead to many...

How molecules become magnetic ... and the resulting wonderland

In everyday life, the word “magnetism” most often refers to solid materials, metals, alloys, oxides. As for molecules, they are considered to be isolated, non-magnetic objects. Nevertheless, to be or not to be (magnetic) is not the appropriate question: everything is magnetic; the true problem lies in determining how. The purpose of this lecture is to illustrate the magnetism of molecules throu...