Studies on structural and magnetic properties of NdFeO3 single crystals grown by optical floating zone technique

NdFeO3 single crystals have been grown by optical floating-zone technique using Nd2O3 and Fe2O3 as the source by solid-state reaction method. The crystalline structure of NdFeO3 belongs to orthorhombic symmetry and the presence of a distorted perovskite structure was confirmed by powder X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis. From the XRD results, it is visualized that the lattice expansion has been observed in the unit cell parameters which may appear due to interstitial defects in the NdFeO3 matrix. The deficiency of oxygen atoms and the presence of excess Fe ions in NdFeO3 have been confirmed with EDX spectra. The spin-reorientation region (T = 120 K) exhibits lower coercive field and the hysteresis loops depict enhanced magnetization (Ms and Mr) values of NdFeO3 single crystal. Presence of compensation temperature point at Tcomp = 7.5 K denotes the anti-parallel alignment of rare-earth ions with Fe magnetic moments. At high temperatures, Fe3+ magnetic moments show strong antiferromagnetic interactions ensuing in Neel temperature (TN) at 690 K.