Novel magneto-electric multiferroics from first-principles calculations

Interest in first-principles calculations within the multiferroic community has been rapidly on the rise over the last decade. Initially considered as a powerful support to explain experimentally observed behaviours, the trend has evolved and, nowadays, density functional theory calculations have become also an essential predicting tool for identifying original rules to achieve multiferroism and design new magneto-electric compounds. This chapter aims at highlighting the key advances in the field of multiferroics, to which first-principles methods have contributed significantly. The essential theoretical developments that made this research possible are also briefly presented. (C) 2015 Academie des sciences. Published by Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.