Effect of annealing temperature on structural, optical, magnetic and electrical properties of CrFeO3 multiferroic nanoparticles: A validation to first-principle calculations

Abstract

Recently, room-temperature multiferroic materials have attracted great interest as they are suitable for the design of low-power electronic and spintronic devices. In this paper, we have investigated the effect of annealing temperature on the structural, electrical and magnetic properties of CrFeO3 multiferroic nanoparticles prepared by sol-gel auto-combustion method. The structural properties by observing X-ray diffractogram and its thorough Rietveld refinement confirmed the trigonal crystal structure with space group R3̅. The crystallite size calculated from the W-H plot increases from 39.6 nm to 100.5 nm with the increase of annealing temperature. FTIR results confirmed the evolution of ilmenite type ABO3 phase. Electron microscopy images showed increase of grain size due to agglomeration of nanoparticles at higher annealing temperature. EDXA spectra and color mapping demonstrated the elemental purity. Magnetic measurements revealed the antiferromagnetic nature of CrFeO3 multiferroic nanoparticles. Electrical measurements showed the decrease in dielectric constant with the increase in frequency. We have validated the results by running systematically first-principle calculations (Density Functional Theory) on CrFeO3 multiferroic nanoparticles.