Design of magnetoelectric coupling in ferroelectric metal

doi:10.1088/1674-1056/ae6173

Abstract Ferroelectricity and metallicity have traditionally been considered difficult to coexist until the experimental discovery of the polar metal LiOsO$_{3}$ in 2013. Polar metallic materials offer new opportunities for the development of nonvolatile memory. However, simultaneously achieving ferroelectricity, magnetic order, and their strong coupling in a single-phase material remains a challenge. To address this, by using a combination of first-principles calculations and magnetic space group symmetry analysis, we establish a design principle to find magnetoelectric (ME) multiferroics. Our results show that the (CrSb)$_{m}$/(BiSb)$_n$ superlattice with altermagnetic CrSb and ferroelectric BiSb can have ferroelectric and magnetic orders and metallicity. Furthermore, the switching of the polarization can effectively control the weak ferromagnetism in the superlattices, in which the strength of this ME coupling is correlated with the magnitude of the induced polarization in the CrSb layers. Our research provides a material design route for exploring multiferroics with ME coupling.

Keywords: magnetoelectric effects and multiferroics electron density of states density functional theory calculations

Received: 15 January 2026
Revised: 07 April 2026
Accepted manuscript online: 20 April 2026

PACS:	75.85.+t	(Magnetoelectric effects, multiferroics)
	71.20.-b	(Electron density of states and band structure of crystalline solids)
	71.15.Mb	(Density functional theory, local density approximation, gradient and other corrections)

Fund: W.Z. and X.-Z.L. were supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 12474081), the Open Research Fund of the Key Laboratory of Quantum Materials and Devices at Southeast University (Ministry of Education), and the Start-up Research Fund of Southeast University. The DFT calculations were performed on high-performance computers supported by the Big Data Computing Center of Southeast University.

Corresponding Authors: Xue-Zeng Lu
E-mail: xuezenglu@seu.edu.cn

Cite this article:

Wang Zhang(张旺) and Xue-Zeng Lu(逯学曾) Design of magnetoelectric coupling in ferroelectric metal 2026 Chin. Phys. B 35 077506

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