DyMnO3: A model system of type-II multiferroics

One of the main motivations for multiferroic researches is to explore distinctive magnetoelectric controls for conceptually novel electronic devices and information storage technologies. DyMnO3 possesses two major microscopic mechanisms for ferroelectricity generation, i.e., the inverse Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya interaction between Mn spin pairs and the exchange striction between DyMn spin pairs, making it an aggressive model to address various opportunities for magnetoelectric controls. In this short review, some recent experimental results on tailoring the multiferroicity and magnetoelectric coupling in DyMnO3 were represented. By means of various approaches including chemical substitution and strain/domain engineering, we have demonstrated the multiferroicity and magnetoelectric coupling of DyMnO3, which can be manipulated over a broad scale. These results may bring alternative strategies in designing superior multiferroicity and unconventional magnetoelectric controls for multiferroic applications.