The magnetic structure of DyFeO3revisited: Fe spin reorientation and Dy incommensurate magnetic order

Clemens Ritter; Rui Vilarinho; Joaquim Agostinho Moreira; Matus Mihalik; Marian Mihalik; Stanislav Savvin

doi:10.1088/1361-648X/ac6787

The magnetic structure of DyFeO₃revisited: Fe spin reorientation and Dy incommensurate magnetic order

J Phys Condens Matter. 2022 Apr 28;34(26). doi: 10.1088/1361-648X/ac6787.

Authors

Clemens Ritter¹, Rui Vilarinho², Joaquim Agostinho Moreira², Matus Mihalik³, Marian Mihalik³, Stanislav Savvin¹

Affiliations

¹ Institut Laue-Langevin, 71 Avenue des Martyrs, 38042 Grenoble, France.
² IFIMUP-Institute of Physics for Advanced Materials, Nanotechnology and Photonics, Physics and Astronomy Department, Faculty of Science, University of Porto, Porto, Portugal.
³ Institute of Experimental Physics, Watsonova 47, 040 01 Kosice, Slovakia.

PMID: 35421851
DOI: 10.1088/1361-648X/ac6787

Abstract

High resolution and high intensity neutron powder diffraction is used to study the ground state magnetic order and the spin reorientation transition in the orthoferrite DyFeO₃. The transition from the high temperaturek= 0 Γ₄(G_xA_yF_z) to the low temperature Γ₁(A_xG_yC_z) type order of the Fe-sublattice is found atT_SR= 73 K and does not show any thermal hysteresis. BelowT_N2= 4 K the Dy-sublattice orders in an incommensurate magnetic structure withk= [0, 0, 0.028] while the Fe-sublattice keeps its commensurate Γ₁type order. DyFeO₃is the first orthoferriteRFeO₃to possess an incommensurate magnetic order of the rare earth sublattice under zero field conditions; an important piece of information neglected in the recent discussion of its multiferroic properties.

Keywords: DyFeO3; incommensurate magnetic structure; neutron diffraction; orthoferrites; spin reorientation.