Design principles for ferroelectricity induced by antiferromagnetic ordering

Coupling between electrical dipole and magnetism is the key ingredient in the search for multiferroics. On the other hand, functional antiferromagnets have attracted enormous interests and significantly expand the pool of spintronic materials. With the help of recently established spin space group theory, we have filtered out the space groups that allow electrical polarization emerging from antiferromagnetic spin ordering. A new mechanism to induce the electrical polarization purely by nested antiferromagnetic sublattices is identified. Following the guidance, we proposed several candidates and computed the polarization and bulk photovoltaic effect using first-principles calculations. Our work paves the way for designing functional multiferroics with antiferromagnetic materials without spin-orbit coupling.