Magnetoelectric relaxor and reentrant behaviours in multiferroic Pb(Fe2/3W1/3)O3 crystal

Significant quenched disorder in crystal structure can break ferroic (magnetic or electric) long-range order, resulting in the development of ferroic glassy states at low temperatures such as magnetic spin glasses, electric dipolar glasses, relaxor ferroelectrics, etc. These states have been widely studied due to novel physical phenomena they reveal. Much less known are the effects of quenched disorder in multiferroics, i.e. the materials where magnetic and electric correlations coexist. Here we report an unusual behaviour in complex perovskite Pb(Fe2/3W1/3)O3 (PFW) crystals: the coexistence of electric relaxor, magnetic relaxor and antiferromagnetic (AFM) states. The most striking finding is the transformation of the AFM phase into a new reentrant-type magnetic glassy phase below Tg ≅ 10 K. We show that the behaviour at this transformation contrasts the typical behaviour of canonical spin glasses and is similar to the behaviour of relaxor ferroelectrics. Magnetoelectric effect is also observed in the AFM phase in the temperature range of the transition into electric relaxor phase at Tf ≅ 200. The mechanism of magnetic relaxor behaviour is supposed to arise from the frustrated interactions among the spins located at the AFM domain walls. Our results should inspire further studies of multirelaxor behaviour in other multiferroic systems.