Integrated study of the structural and magnetic characteristics of Nd(Mn, Cr)0.5O3: exploring perovskite material

Abstract

Abstract In this work, a perovskite material, Nd(Mn,Cr)0.5O3, is synthesized by a sol–gel chemical route method, and the structural and magnetic properties of the prepared samples were studied for a range of annealing temperatures. The variation of structural parameters against annealing temperatures is analyzed via Rietveld refinement, and it exhibits orthorhombic cubic geometry with non-monotonically increasing lattice parameters. lattice strain is due to canting in the Cr3+ and Mn3+ ions and the presence of strain is also confirmed by the shifting of XRD peaks towards a higher 2θ angle. The obtained Goldschmidt tolerance factor is 0.87, which confirms the stability of the perovskite structure. The magnetic properties of the prepared samples show the ferromagnetic transition temperature ranging from 86.5 K to 82.2 K due to super-exchange interaction between Cr3+ and Mn3+ ions via oxygen ions. The stability in crystal structure, lower value of strain, and ferromagnetic nature at low temperature for the samples annealed up to1000 °C may make this material applicable for magnetic data storage.