High temperature phase transitions and critical exponents of Samarium orthoferrite determined by in situ optical ellipsometry

Determining phase transitions has always been a great challenge in material science due to their important fundamental and technological aspects. Recently, iron-based perovskites (RFeO3), exhibiting phase transitions at high temperatures, have attracted much interest for their functional properties at room temperature, such as multiferroicity (BiFeO3) and ultrafast spin dynamics (TmFeO3). In this family of materials, Samarium orthoferrite (SmFeO3) is a weak ferromagnet, ordering at high temperatures and exhibiting an intrinsic spin reorientation transition above room temperature, which is “hidden” in macroscopic magnetization measurements in polycrystalline samples. In the present article, we show that the related magnetic high temperature phase transitions can be studied through their dielectric functions by spectroscopic ellipsometry in situ and without any need for an applied external magnetic field. The presence of this intrinsic spin reorientation transition is demonstrated for textured SmFeO3 films and we have determined a critical exponent of β = 0.45 ± 0.01 for the magnetic phase transition, coherently from optical, magneto-optical, and structural investigations.