Near Room Temperature Magnetic Transition in Spin Canted Iron-Cobalt Perovskites: LnFe0.5Co0.5O3 (Ln = Eu and Dy).

We have synthesized cobalt doped orthoferrites LnFe0.5Co0.5O3, with Ln = Eu & Dy by sol-gel route and characterized the compounds using X-ray diffraction and electron microscopy. The magnetic investigations reveal that both the samples are canted antiferromagnet near the room temperature. The antisymmetric exchange or Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya (DM) interaction induces weak ferromagnetism due to canting of the antiferromagnetically ordered spins. In the case of Ln-Fe-Co orthoferrites, two magnetic sublattices (Ln3+-4f and Fe3+/Co3+-3d) generally align in opposite directions and interesting temperature dependent phenomena e.g. spin-reorientation, reversal magnetization etc. are observed in the system. We also analysed the existence of hysteresis in terms of the strength of magnetic interactions between Fe3+ and Co3+ ions with different A-site rare earth cations.