Room temperature multiferroic properties of Mn doped La2Ti2O7

• DOI: 10.1007/s10832-013-9855-3
• Publication Date: 2013-08-17T05:12:32Z
• Authors: Lizhen Huang; Yang Qiu; Ying Xi; Shuai Huang; Zhaoming Tian; S. L. Yuan
• Keywords: 0103 physical sciences; 01 natural sciences

Polycrystalline La2Ti2-xMnxO7 (LTMO) (x = 0−0.16) ceramics fabricated by the conventional solid-state reaction are utilized to investigate the effect of Mn doping on the ferroelectric (FE) and ferromagnetism (FM) systematically. Both the FE and FM properties strongly depend on the doping level of Mn atoms, which directly induces a structural phase transition from monoclinic to orthorhombic. Compared with pure La2Ti2O7 (LTO), remnant polarization decreases sharply with the doping level at first, and slightly increases when x ≥ 0.08, which is proposed to result from the evolution oxygen vacancies. All the doped samples exhibit weak FM property at room temperature, until the maximum can be observed for x = 0.08. Mn3+-Mn4+ double-exchange and anti-FM Mn3+-Mn3+ and Mn4+-Mn4+ super-exchange interactions are responsible for the different ferromagnetic behavior of LTMO.