J Supercond Nov Magn (2017) 30:1317–1325
DOI 10.1007/s10948-016-3928-x
ORIGINAL PAPER
Evidence for Room-Temperature Weak Ferromagnetic
and Ferroelectric Ordering in Magnetoelectric
Pb(Fe
0.634
W
0.266
Nb
0.1
)O
3
Ceramic
Shidaling Matteppanavar
1
· Shivaraja I
1
· Sudhindra Rayaprol
2
·
Basavaraj Angadi
1
· Balaram Sahoo
3
Received: 30 September 2016 / Accepted: 22 November 2016 / Published online: 5 December 2016
© Springer Science+Business Media New York 2016
Abstract We report the evidence of weak ferromagnetic
and ferroelectric ordering in polycrystalline Pb(Fe
0.634
W
0.266
Nb
0.1
)O
3
(0.8(PbFe
2/3
W
1/3
)O
3
–0.2Pb(Fe
1/2
Nb
1/2
)
O
3
) (PFWN) ceramic at room temperature. The Pb(Fe
0.634
W
0.266
Nb
0.1
)O
3
solid solution synthesized through the
columbite method. The obtained single-phase Pb(Fe
0.634
W
0.266
Nb
0.1
)O
3
ceramic was subjected to X-ray diffrac-
tion, neutron diffraction, magnetization, M¨ ossbauer spec-
troscopy, and ferroelectric measurements. The X-ray diff-
raction and neutron diffraction pattern confirms the for-
mation of single phase without any traces of pyrochlore
phases, having cubic structure with Pm-3m space group.
The Rietveld refinements were carried out on both pat-
terns, and ND data confirms the G-type antiferromagnetic
structure with propagation vector (k = 1/2, 1/2, and 1/2).
However, along with the antiferromagnetic ordering of the
Fe spins, we also observed the existence of weak ferro-
magnetism. This result was confirmed through (i) a clear
opening of hysteresis (M − H) loop, (ii) bifurcation of
the field-cooled (FC) and zero-field-cooled (ZFC) sus-
ceptibilities, (iii) spin-glass behavior, and (iv) M¨ ossbauer
spectroscopy.
Basavaraj Angadi
brangadi@gmail.com
1
Department of Physics, Bangalore University, Jnanabharathi
Campus, Bangalore, 560056, India
2
UGC-DAE-Consortium for Scientific Research, Mumbai
Centre, BARC Campus, Mumbai, 400085, India
3
Materials Research Centre, Indian Institute of Science,
Bangalore, 560012, India
Keywords Multiferroics · Columbite method · Neutron
diffraction · Spin glassy · Weak ferromagnetism ·
Ferroelectric
1 Introduction
Pb-based multiferroics [1–3] are promising candidates for
the design and synthesis of multifunctional materials. They
are important for their unique and strong coupling of elec-
tric, magnetic, and structural order parameters, giving rise
to simultaneous ferroelectricity, ferromagnetism, and fer-
roelasticity [4]. This is of great interest to study these
compounds from a fundamental perspective, as well as for
potential applications in magnetoelectric and magnetoelas-
tic devices. In these systems, the interplay and competitions
between spins, dopant charge carriers, the degree of free-
dom of orbital, and lattice symmetry lead to a variety
of couplings and phase transitions [4]. Currently, most of
the research on single-phase multiferroics is concentrated
on lowering sintering temperatures as much as possible,
without much change in the properties of the materials.
Among them, lead iron tungstate—Pb(Fe
2/3
W
1/3
)O
3
(PFW) and lead iron niobate—Pb(Fe
1/2
Nb
1/2
)O
3
(PFN)
are widely studied multiferroic properties independently
because of their unique multiferroic proprieties [5–7]. The
PFW is known as a multiferroic material with a com-
plex perovskite-type structure (AB′B?O
3
) in which Fe
3+
and W
6+
are randomly distributed at the octahedral B-site
positions and presents a relaxor ferroelectric and antiferro-
magnetic ordering. The ferroelectric Curie temperature (T
C
)
was reported to occur between 150 and 200 K [5]. PFN
undergoes a normal ferroelectric phase transition which
occurs around 380 K and an antiferromagnetic phase tran-
sition at 155 K [6, 7]. Unfortunately, these materials suffer