Spin-reorientation magnetic transitions in Mn-doped SmFeO3

Jian Kang; Yali Yang; Xiaolong Qian; Kai Xu; Xiaopeng Cui; Yifei Fang; Venkatesh Chandragiri; Baojuan Kang; Bin Chen; Alessandro Stroppa; Shixun Cao; Jincang Zhang; Wei Ren

doi:10.1107/S205225251700793X

Spin-reorientation magnetic transitions in Mn-doped SmFeO₃

IUCrJ. 2017 Jul 4;4(Pt 5):598-603. doi: 10.1107/S205225251700793X. eCollection 2017 Sep 1.

Authors

Jian Kang¹, Yali Yang¹, Xiaolong Qian¹, Kai Xu¹, Xiaopeng Cui¹, Yifei Fang¹, Venkatesh Chandragiri¹, Baojuan Kang¹, Bin Chen², Alessandro Stroppa^{1

3}, Shixun Cao^{1

4}, Jincang Zhang^{1

4}, Wei Ren^{1

4}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Physics, International Center of Quantum and Molecular Structures and Materials Genome Institute, Shanghai University, Shanghai 200444, People's Republic of China.
² Hangzhou Key Laboratory of Quantum Matter, Department of Physics, Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou 310036, People's Republic of China.
³ CNR-SPIN, L'Aquila, Italy.
⁴ Shanghai Key Laboratory of High-Temperature Superconductors, Shanghai University, Shanghai 200444, People's Republic of China.

Abstract

Spin reorientation is a magnetic phase transition in which rotation of the magnetization vector with respect to the crystallographic axes occurs upon a change in the temperature or magnetic field. For example, SmFeO₃ shows a magnetization rotation from the c axis above 480 K to the a axis below 450 K, known as the Γ₄ → Γ₂ transition. This work reports the successful synthesis of the new single-crystal perovskite SmFe_0.75Mn_0.25O₃ and finds interesting spin reorientations above and below room temperature. In addition to the spin reorientation of the Γ₄ → Γ₂ magnetic phase transition observed at around T_SR2 = 382 K, a new spin reorientation, Γ₂ → Γ₁, was seen at around T_SR1 = 212 K due to Mn doping, which could not be observed in the parent rare earth perovskite compound. This unexpected spin configuration has complete antiferromagnetic order without any canting-induced weak ferromagnetic moment, resulting in zero magnetization in the low-temperature regime. M-T and M-H measurements have been made to study the temperature and magnetic-field dependence of the observed spin reorientation transitions.

Keywords: Mn doping; magnetic phase transitions; rare earth perovskites; spin reorientation transitions.

Grants and funding

This work was funded by National Key Basic Research Program of China grants 2015CB921600 and 2016YFB0700201. National Natural Science Foundation of China grants 51672171, 11574194, 51372149, and 11274222. Eastern Scholar Program from Shanghai Municipal Education Commission grant . Shanghai Materials Genome Institute from the Shanghai Municipal Science and Technology Commission grant 14DZ2261200.