Structural, magnetic and electronic structure studies of PrFe1−xMnxO3 (x = 0, 0.1, 0.3, 0.5) thin films grown on Si (1 0 0)

Abstract

Structural, magnetic and electronic structure studies of PrFe1−xMnxO3 (x=0, 0.1, 0.3, 0.5) thin films grown on Si (100) by pulsed laser deposition technique are presented. All these films were polycrystalline and exhibit a single-phase orthorhombic structure with space group pbnm. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) studies revealed that surface roughness and grains size decreases with Mn doping. From the magnetic study, it is observed that for concentrations x=0, 0.3 and 0.5, the magnetization increases monotonously with decreasing temperature due to the enhancement of magnetic moment of Fe-sublattices. Magnetic anomaly was observed for x=0.1 concentration which was attributed to the spin reorientation effect. Electronic structures of the studied samples confirm trivalent state of Fe with small contribution from divalent state. The valency of Mn is mainly found in trivalent state with a small contribution from divalent and tetravalent states. The changes in the spectral features of the compound PrFeO3 with Mn doping are evident in the difference spectra of O K-edge. It was observed that the density of states modified with Mn doping.