Emerging properties of domain boundaries define the emerging field of domain boundary engineering. For many applications, the domain boundary acts as template onto which the desired properties, such as (super-) conductivity, polarity, ferroelectricity, magnetism, are imposed. This requires for most applications that the domain structures remain unchanged under appropriate chemical doping. Hassanpour et al (2016 New J. Phys. 18 043015) have now shown, for the first time, that the magnetic and electric domain structures remain indeed robust against charge carrier doping (Ca2+ and Zr4+) of the workbench multi-ferroic ErMnO3. This opens the way into novel functionalities based on the nanostructure of ErMnO3.