Structural Perspective on Multifunctional Oxide Materials

The global demand for technological advancement frequently involves discovering novel, exotic, multifunctional materials. Due to their broad spectrum of properties, including ferroelectricity, magnetism, magnetoresistance, and superconductivity, complex oxides are one of the most alluring research topics. These functional electrical and magnetic materials are crucial to modern science and technology. For example, ferroelectrics, materials with spontaneous electric polarization that can be changed by an applied electric field, are frequently utilized as tunable capacitors and are used as the basis for ferroelectric random-access memory in computers. On the other hand, ferromagnetic materials are the materials that are typically used for encoding and storing data, such as in hard drives. Multiferroic materials may allow the fabrication of multiple control devices, such as electric fields, electric field-controlled magnetic data storage, and energy storage devices. Rare earth manganites are a perfect example of multiferroic materials with unique structural properties that change their physical properties. Therefore, studies on functional oxide materials and compounds with multiple degrees of complexity are essential. The present article is focused on the structural aspects of these multifunctional oxide materials, which are vital to understanding the correlation to the physical properties of such exotic materials.