Ferroic Materials, Domains, and Domain Walls: Bridging Fundamentals with Next-Generation Technology

Submission Deadline: April 30, 2025
Ferroic materials, such as (anti)ferromagnetics, (anti)ferroelectrics, and magnetoelectrics, have attracted significant attention due to their potential technological applications. Recent research has led to the discovery of new properties and phenomena, such as identifying exotic topological structures, revealing unconventional ferroic order, and exploiting the emerging functionality of domains and domain walls in nanoelectronics. These advances have been made possible by improved theoretical models, fabrication techniques, and characterization methods. This Special Topic allows researchers to share their latest findings on ferroic systems and discuss future directions, shaping the path for next-generation technology.

Topics covered include, but are not limited to:

  • Emerging properties and phenomena in altermagnetic materials, (anti)ferromagnetics, (anti)ferroelectrics and
    magnetoelectrics.
  • Advances in the fabrication and characterization of ferroic materials: (multi)ferroic van der Waals, Rashba
    ferroelectrics, organic ferroelectrics, and oxide ferroic films including: hafnia, zirconia, nickelates, perovskites,
    (core-shell) nanoparticles, functional heterostructures, surfaces and interfaces.
  • Controlling the ferroic order by strain, non-conjugate fields, and light (light-mediated switching, photocurrents
    and photovoltaic effect).
  • Functional properties and applications of polar and ferroelectric domain walls: recent advances in theory,
    simulations, experiments, and methods.
  • Numerical, theoretical and experimental advances in ferroic topological structures: vortices, skyrmions, merons,
    hopfions.
  • (Ultra-)fast and (ultra-)small phenomena in ferroic materials: light-matter interaction, out-of-equilibrium
    phenomena, phase transitions.
  • Advanced AI assisted studies (automated experiments and analysis, dimensionality reduction, clustering,
    unmixing), Bayesian optimization, and future challenges in ferroic materials informatics.

Guest Editors

Yokota Hiroko, Chiba University

Beatriz Noheda, University of Groningen

Ni Zhong, East China Normal University

Salia Chérifi-Hertel, French National Scientific Research Center (CNRS)

Submission Deadline: April 30, 2025