Multiferroic materials have attracted much interest during the recent years. Our study is devoted to a prototypic system: yttrium manganite. In particular, we focus on the ferroelectric properties in bulk and in thin film form. Yttrium manganite belongs to the class of ABO3 compounds. Most theoretical studies of ferroelectricity to date were concentrated on cubic perovskite ABO3. Yttrium manganite is hexagonal and is an improper ferroelectric. We were interested to study theoretically and experimentally how these two features behave in thin film form.
