SPICE Workshop on Ferrons and Magnons: friends or foes? July 7th - 9th, 2026
Manuel Bibes
Multiferroics offer a unique route to control magnetic excitations with electric fields, combining non-volatility, low dissipation and strong spin-lattice coupling. In this talk, I will discuss our work on BiFeO3, a room-temperature ferroelectric antiferromagnet whose cycloidal spin order gives rise to Raman-active magnon modes1. I will first show that these spin waves can be tuned electrically and non-volatilely at room temperature, with frequency shifts exceeding 30%, establishing BiFeO3 as a model platform for electrically programmable magnonics.
I will then describe how epitaxial strain, film orientation and nanoscale boundary conditions reshape the magnetic ground state of BiFeO3, either preserving, modifying or suppressing the cycloid and its associated magnonic response2–4. Combining Raman spectroscopy, Mössbauer/NRS probes and modelling, these studies led to magnetic phase diagrams that clarify when functional spin-wave modes survive in thin films. Finally, I will discuss recent results on LaFeO3/BiFeO3/LaFeO3 heterostructures5, where antiferromagnetic confinement strongly enhances magnon-mediated spin transport and enables electrical control of non-local spin signals. Together, these results illustrate how ferroelectricity can act not only as a static order parameter, but as an active handle to engineer, confine and reconfigure magnons in oxide heterostructures.
1. Rovillain, P. et al. Nature Mater 9, 975 (2010).
2. Sando, D. et al. Nature Mater 12, 641 (2013).
3. Agbelele, A. et al. Adv. Mater. 29, 1602327 (2017).
4. Sando, D. et al. Applied Physics Reviews 6, 041404 (2019).
5. Husain, S. et al. Nature Mater. (2026) doi:10.1038/s41563-026-02531-8.