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Progress in magnetoelectric materials is hindered by apparently contradictory requirements for time‐reversal symmetry broken and polar ferroelectric electronic structure in common ferromagnets and antiferromagnets. Alternative routes can be provided by recent discoveries of a time‐reversal symmetry breaking anomalous Hall effect (AHE) in noncollinear magnets and altermagnets, but hitherto reported bulk materials are not polar. Here, the authors report the observation of a spontaneous AHE in doped AgCrSe2, a layered polar semiconductor with an antiferromagnetic coupling between Cr spins in adjacent layers. The anomalous Hall resistivity 3 μΩcm$\mu \Omega \, \textnormal {cm}$ is comparable to the largest observed in compensated magnetic systems to date, and is rapidly switched off when the angle of an applied magnetic field is rotated to ≈80° from the crystalline c‐axis. The ionic gating experiments show that the anomalous Hall conductivity magnitude can be enhanced by modulating the p‐type carrier density. They also present theoretical results that suggest the AHE is driven by Berry curvature due to noncollinear antiferromagnetic correlations among Cr spins, which are consistent with the previously suggested magnetic ordering in AgCrSe2. The results open the possibility to study the interplay of magnetic and ferroelectric‐like responses in this fascinating class of materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A detailed experimental investigation of Fe1+yTe (y = 0.11, 0.12) using pulsed magnetic fields up to 60 T confirms remarkable magnetic shape-memory (MSM) effects. These effects result from magnetoelastic transformation processes in the low-temperature antiferromagnetic state of these materials. The observation of modulated and finely twinned microstructure at the nanoscale through scanning tunneling microscopy establishes a behavior similar to that of thermoelastic martensite. We identified the observed, elegant hierarchical twinning pattern of monoclinic crystallographic domains as an ideal realization of crossing twin bands. The antiferromagnetism of the monoclinic ground state allows for a magnetic-field–induced reorientation of these twin variants by the motion of one type of twin boundaries. At sufficiently high magnetic fields, we observed a second isothermal transformation process with large hysteresis for different directions of applied field. This gives rise to a second MSM effect caused by a phase transition back to the field-polarized tetragonal lattice state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The thermoelectric properties of single-crystalline and polycrystalline FeGa3 are systematically investigated over a wide temperature range. At low temperatures, below 20 K, previously not known pronounced peaks in the thermal conductivity (400-800 W K-1 m-1) with corresponding maxima in the thermopower (in the order of -16000 μV K-1) were found in single-crystalline samples. Measurements in single crystals along [100] and [001] directions indicate only a slight anisotropy in both the electrical and thermal transports. From susceptibility and heat-capacity measurements, a magnetic or structural phase transition was excluded. Using density functional theory based calculations, we have revisited the electronic structure of FeGa3 and compared the magnetic (including correlations) and nonmagnetic electronic densities of states. Thermopower at fixed carrier concentrations is calculated using semiclassical Boltzmann transport theory, and the calculated results match fairly with our experimental data. The inclusion of strong electron correlations treated in a mean field manner (by LSDA + U) does not improve this comparison, rendering strong correlations as the sole explanation for the low-temperature enhancement unlikely. Eventually, after a careful review, we assign the peaks in the thermopower as a manifestation of the phonon-drag effect, which is supported by thermopower measurements in a magnetic field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A combined theoretical and experimental study of the natural Cu2+mineral callaghanite is presented. Its crystal structure features well separated Cu2(OH)6 structural dimers with weakly bonded carbonate groups and water molecules in between. Susceptibility, field-dependent magnetization and specific-heat measurements reveal a compound with a small spin gap of about 7 K. The observed magnetic properties are well described by a model of isolated antiferromagnetic spin dimers. Possible ferromagnetic interactions between the dimers amount to -1.5 K, at most. Different flavors of electronic structure calculations have been employed to locate the magnetic dimers in the crystal structure, i.e., to determine whether they coincide with the structural dimers or not. Calculations of the coupling between the structural dimers clearly show that magnetic and structural dimers are the same. For the intradimer coupling, however, the computational results confirmed a coupling strength close to zero but the sign of the coupling could not be determined unambiguously. Based on this finding, we then discuss how the reliability of the numerical methods depends on the characteristics of exchange pathways and on structural features of the compound in general. Eventually, we try to provide a minimum coupling strength that is needed for a reliable computational description. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report the crystal structure, magnetization measurements, and band-structure calculations for the spin-1/2 quantum magnet CaCu2(SeO3)2Cl2. The magnetic behavior of this compound is well reproduced by a uniform spin-1/2 chain model with the nearest-neighbor exchange of about 133 K. Due to the peculiar crystal structure, spin chains run in the direction almost perpendicular to the structural chains. We find an exotic regime of frustrated interchain couplings owing to two inequivalent exchanges of 10 K each. Peculiar superexchange paths grant an opportunity to investigate bond-randomness effects under partial Cl-Br substitution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]