The discoveries of gigantic ferroelectric polarization in BiFeO(3) (ref. 1) and ferroelectricity accompanied by a magnetic order in TbMnO(3) (ref. 2) have renewed interest in research on magnetoelectric multiferroics, materials in which magnetic and ferroelectric orders coexist, from both fundamental and technological points of view. Among several different types of magnetoelectric multiferroic, magnetically induced ferroelectrics in which ferroelectricity is induced by complex magnetic orders, such as spiral orders, exhibit giant magnetoelectric effects, remarkable changes in electric polarization in response to a magnetic field. Many magnetically induced ferroelectrics showing the magnetoelectric effects have been found in the past several years. From a practical point of view, however, their magnetoelectric effects are useless because they operate only far below room temperature (for example, 28 K in TbMnO(3) (ref. 2) and 230 K in CuO (ref. 11)). Furthermore, in most of them, the operating magnetic field is an order of tesla that is too high for practical applications. Here we report materials, Z-type hexaferrites, overcoming these problems on magnetically induced ferroelectrics. The best magnetoelectric properties were obtained for Sr(3)Co(2)Fe(24)O(41) ceramics sintered in oxygen, which exhibit a low-field magnetoelectric effect at room temperature. Our result represents an important step towards practical device applications using the magnetoelectric effects.

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Temperature-dependent cathodoluminescence spectra were measured from (001) unintentionally doped, (100) Si-doped, and (010) Mg-doped β-Ga2O3 substrates prepared by either the floating zone growth or edge-defined film-fed growth methods. Although β-Ga2O3 is expected to be an indirect bandgap material, direct Γ-Γ transitions were found to be dominant in the optical transmittance spectra. The substrates exhibited no near-band-edge emission and instead exhibited ultraviolet luminescence, blue luminescence (BL), and green luminescence bands. Since the BL intensity strongly depended on the resistivity in the crystals, there was evidence of a correlation between the BL intensity and formation energy of oxygen vacancies.

The polarized transmittance and reflectance spectra of β-Ga2O3 crystals are investigated, and the data are interpreted in terms of the monoclinic crystal band structure. The energies of the absorption edge can be divided into six ranges, and these ranges can be assigned to the transitions from the valence bands to the conduction band minimum according to the selection rules. The indirect bandgap-energy of 4.43 eV is smaller than the direct bandgap-energy of 4.48 eV at RT; and the energy difference of 0.05 eV nearly matches the theoretically calculated values of 0.03–0.04 eV.

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