Rare-earth orthoferrite SmFeO₃ is an outstanding single-phase multiferroic material, holding great potential in novel low-power electronic devices. Nevertheless, simultaneous magnetic and ferroelectric orders as well as magnetoelectric (ME) coupling effect at room temperature (RT) in this system have not been demonstrated yet. In this study, epitaxial SmFeO₃ films were successfully prepared onto tensile-strain Nb-SrTiO₃ (Nb-STO) substrates by a pulsed laser deposition (PLD) method. Measurement results show that the films exhibit obvious ferromagnetic and ferroelectric orders at RT. Meanwhile, the magnetic anisotropy gradually changes from out-of-plane (OP) to in-plane (IP) direction with increasing film thickness, which is attributed to the variations of O 2p-Fe 3d hybridization intensity and Fe 3d-orbit occupancy caused by the strain-relaxed effect. Moreover, electrically driven reversible magnetic switching further proves that the SmFeO₃ films exhibit the RT ME coupling effect, suggesting promising applications in new-generation electric-write magnetic-read data storage devices.

稀土正铁氧体SmFeO ₃是一种出色的单相多铁性材料，在新型低功耗电子设备中具有巨大的潜力。然而，尚未证明该系统中在室温（RT）时同时具有磁和铁电顺序以及磁电（ME）耦合效应。在这项研究中，成功地在拉伸应变Nb-SrTiO ₃上制备了外延SmFeO ₃薄膜（Nb-STO）基板的脉冲激光沉积（PLD）方法。测量结果表明，薄膜在室温下表现出明显的铁磁和铁电有序。同时，磁各向异性随着膜厚的增加而从面外（OP）方向逐渐变为面内（IP）方向，这归因于O 2p-Fe 3d杂化强度和Fe 3d轨道占有率的变化通过应变松弛效应。此外，电动可逆磁性开关进一步证明了SmFeO ₃薄膜具有RT ME耦合作用，表明在新一代电写入磁读取数据存储设备中具有广阔的应用前景。