Studies on Structural, Morphological, Local Electrical, Optical and Magnetic Properties of Iron Site Manganese Substituted Yttrium Orthoferrite

Yttrium orthoferrite (YFeO 3 ) is of considerable interest for its potential application in magnetic field sensors and magneto optical data storage devices. Doping is one of the effective approaches to tune the compound properties. And it is important to determine the doping sites of the dopants to better understanding the related mechanism. In this work, Manganese (Mn) doped YFeO 3 , i.e. , YFM x O powders with 0 ≤ x ≤ 0.1 were synthesized by hydrothermal method to study the influences of doping on their structural, morphological, local electrical, optical and magnetic properties. The experimental results show that Mn dopants occupy Iron (Fe) sites and that all these samples exhibit an orthorhombic structure with space group Pnma . Refined structure parameters are presented. Morphology images show the shape evolution from layered to multilayered with increasing Mn content. The Fe and Y K -edge local structure studies indicate that the valency of Fe and Y is mainly found in trivalent state, which also indicate that substitution of Mn ions not only affects the nearest neighbor atomic shell of Fe but also affects the nearest neighbor’s local structure of Y atoms. IR spectra reveal the characteristic vibrations of the obtained YFM x O samples. From the magnetic study, it is observed that the substitution of Y ions by Mn ions changes the magnetic property of YFeO 3 from ferromagnetic to paramagnetic. Our results show that the addition of Mn exhibits an evident influent on the local structural and magnetic properties.