Spin quantum well-like behavior in single-crystal Gd 0.75 La 0.25 FeO 3
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Published online 28 August 2020 | https://doi.org/10.1007/s40843-020-1439-y
Spin quantum well-like behavior in single-crystal Gd0.75La0.25FeO3 1
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Xin Wen , Zhigang Song , Iftikhar Ahmed Malik , Yifei Fang , Wenyun Yang , Jingzhi Han , 1,4 1,4 5 2 6 6 Shunquan Liu , Honglin Du , Shixun Cao , Jinxing Zhang , Xiangqun Zhang , Zhaohua Cheng , 4,7* 1,5* Yanglong Hou and Jinbo Yang Rare earth orthoferrites (RFeO3, R= Y, Gd, Sm, Nd) have recently attracted much attention due to their novel magnetic and electrical properties such as magnetoelectrics, magneto-dielectrics, and magneto-optics [1–3]. The complex interactions between the two sublattices of 3+ 3+ R and Fe in RFeO3 provide the feasibility of controlling spins in these solids, which makes them promising candidates for the spintronics [4]. A major challenge is to develop a kind of material in which favorable properties such as stability, tunability, and non-volatility [5] can be combined. In this paper, we prepared a high-quality single-crystal of Gd0.75La0.25FeO3 and investigated its magnetic properties from 2 K to room temperature. Different from other RFeO3 orthoferrites (R = rare earth, such as Gd [6], La [7], Er [8], Sm [9,10], and Tm [11]), the weak-ferromagnetic (wFM) moments of the singlecrystal of Gd0.75La0.25FeO3 are discrete and have only two states: the same in magnitude but in opposite direction along the ferromagnetic axis, thus being not able to rotate randomly. The AFM coupling between Gd and Fe sublattices is broken in Gd0.75La0.25FeO3, which leads to a spin-flip. The moment of the Gd sublattice behaves in the same direction with the moment of Fe sublattice until the external magnetic field is large enough. On the other hand, different from common materials whose coercivity often varies with the temperature [12–18], the coercivity in Gd0.75La0.25FeO3 is nearly constant from 50 to 350 K, avoiding being influenced by temperature in the application. These features give Gd0.75La0.25FeO3 great potential 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
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as a convenient and reliable material for information storage. The single-phase sample of Gd0.75La0.25FeO3 was prepared by a solid-state method in a floating zone furnace (see Supplementary information). Fig. 1a illustrates the crystallographic structure of Gd0.75La0.25FeO3 and the magnetic structure of Fe atoms above the antiferromagnetic (AFM) ordering temperature of Gd. The X-ray intensity profiles of the powdered single crystal (Fig. 1b) verify the successful preparation of Gd0.75La0.25FeO3 with high crystalline quality (Fig. S1). All the peaks in the diffraction pattern can be indexed well with the typical perovskite structure having a monoclinic group of Pnma [19]. No visible structure phase transition is observed in the temperature range of 5–300 K (Fig. S2). In our work, all the magnetic measurements were performed along the b-axis of the crystal (Fig. S1). Gd0.75La0.25FeO3 was first cooled to 2 K under a magnetic field of 0 Oe in the zero-field-cooled (ZFC) measurement and 300 Oe in the field-cooled (FC) mea
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