Strain‐Driven Stabilization of a Room‐Temperature Chiral Multiferroic with Coupled Ferroaxial and Ferroelectric Order.

Noncollinear ferroic materials are sought after as testbeds to explore the intimate connections between topology and symmetry, which result in electronic, optical, and magnetic functionalities not observed in collinear ferroic materials. For example, ferroaxial materials have rotational structural distortions that break mirror symmetry and induce chirality. When ferroaxial order is coupled with ferroelectricity arising from a broken inversion symmetry, it offers the prospect of electric‐field‐control of the ferroaxial distortions and opens up new tunable functionalities. However, chiral multiferroics, especially ones stable at room temperature, are rare. A strain‐stabilized, room‐temperature chiral multiferroic phase in single crystals of BaTiS3 is reported here. Using first‐principles calculations, the stabilization of this multiferroic phase having <italic>P</italic>63 space group for biaxial tensile strains exceeding 1.5% applied on the basal <italic>ab</italic>‐plane of the room temperature <italic>P</italic>63<italic>cm</italic> phase of BaTiS3 is predicted. The chiral multiferroic phase is characterized by rotational distortions of TiS6 octahedra around the long <italic>c</italic>‐axis and polar displacement of Ti atoms along the <italic>c</italic>‐axis. The ferroaxial and ferroelectric distortions and their domains in <italic>P</italic>63‐BaTiS3 are directly resolved using atomic resolution scanning transmission electron microscopy. Landau‐based phenomenological modeling predicts a strong coupling between the ferroelectric and the ferroaxial order making <italic>P</italic>63‐BaTiS3 an attractive test bed for achieving electric‐field‐control of chirality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]