The manipulation of mesoscale domain wall phenomena has emerged as a powerful strategy for designing ferroelectric responses in functional devices, but its full potential has not yet been realized in the field of magnetism. We show that mechanically strained samples of Mn3O4 and MnV2O4 exhibit a stripe-like patterning of the bulk magnetization below known magnetostructural transitions, similar to the structural domains reported in ferroelectric materials. Building off our previous magnetic force microscopy data, we use small angle neutron scattering to show that these patterns extend to the bulk, and demonstrate an ability to manipulate the domain walls via applied magnetic field and mechanical stress. We then connect these domains back to the anomalously large magnetoelastic and magnetodielectric response functions reported in these materials, directly correlating local and macroscopic measurements on the same crystals.
@article{arxiv.2011.14970,
title = {Domain wall patterning and giant response functions in ferrimagnetic spinels},
author = {L. L. Kish and A. Thaler and M. Lee and A. V. Zakrzewski and D. Reig-i-Plessis and B. Wolin and X. Wang and K. C. Littrell and R. Budakian and H. D. Zhou and V. S. Zapf and A. A. Aczel and L. DeBeer-Schmitt and G. J. MacDougall},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2011.14970},
year = {2022}
}