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

Abstract In this work, a perovskite material, Nd(Mn,Cr) 0.5 O 3, 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 Cr 3+ and Mn 3+ ions and the presence of strain is also confirmed by the shifting of XRD peaks towards a higher 2 θ 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 Cr 3+ and Mn 3+ 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.