Uniaxial-stress enhancement of spin-driven ferroelectric polarization in a multiferroic CuFe1−xGaxO2

Delafossite compound CuFeO2 is a spin-driven magneto-electric multiferroic, in which magnetic field-induced or nonmagnetic impurity-induced proper helical magnetic ordering generates a spontaneous electric polarization through the spin-orbit-interaction mediated modulation of Fe 3d-O 2p hybridization. As is expected from spin-lattice tightly coupled character of this system, we found an enhancement of spin-driven ferroelectric polarization under [11-bar 0] uniaxial stress as spin-mediated piezoelectric effect. Preparing almost mono-domain state for multiferroic CuFe1−xGaxO2 sample with x = 0.035, we have performed polarized neutron diffraction and in-situ ferroelectric polarization measurements to investigate how the helical magnetic structure is modified and how much ferroelectric polarization increases under application of [11-bar 0] uniaxial stress up to 100 MPa. The uniaxial-stress variation of magnetic structural parameters characterizing helical magnetic ordering suggests decreasing of the ferroelectric polarization according to the calculation on the basis of d-p hybridization mechanism. Therefore, it is suggested that the enhancement of ferroelectric polarization originates not in variation of the magnetic structure but in the enhancement of the d-p hybridization coupling constants.