Magnetic structure of SmFeO3
Very recently room-temperature multiferroic properties of SmFeO3 have been reported [6]. Density functional theory calculations explain the ferroelectricity in this exciting material with the calculated canted antiferromagnetic structure (T_N~670 K). This renders single crystal neutron measurements highly desirable now. Despite the strong neutron absorbtion crossection of the Sm ion we found conditions where the total absorbtion is comparably small. This could be realized by an optimized sample geometry and the use of 0.511 A hot neutrons in a measurement at the D9 diffractometer. Our single crystal neutron measurements reveal an exciting first result: the spin configuration calculated in Ref. [6] can not be correct, since we observe quite strong magnetic intensities that should be absent for this calculated magnetic structure. We obtain a different magnetic symmetry and our magnetic structure is able to explain the ferroelectric properties with the inverse Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction as well. After our first measurement we propose to perform a more detailed measurement at room-temperature now and also a 2nd measurement in the high-temperature magnetic phase (T_SR = 480 K).
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KOMAREK Alexander Christoph; DREES Jan Yvo and FERNANDEZ DIAZ Maria Teresa. (2012). Magnetic structure of SmFeO3 . Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL) doi:10.5291/ILL-DATA.5-41-698
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