Recent progress in first-principles studies of magnetoelectric multiferroics

Materials that combine magnetic and ferroelectric properties have generated increasing interest over the last few years, due to both their diverse properties and their potential utility in new types of magnetoelectric device applications. In this review we discuss recent progress in the study of such magnetoelectric multiferroics which has been achieved using computational first-principles methods based on density functional theory. In particular, we show how first-principles methods have been successfully used to explain various properties of multiferroic materials and to predict novel effects and new systems that exhibit multiferroic properties. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.