Studying the influence of synthesis conditions on the magnetic properties of perovskite-like YbFeO3 nanomaterials

Abstract

By using the co-precipitation method, the orthorhombic structure of YbFeO3 (o-YbFeO3) was obtained. To investigate the effect of different synthesis conditions on the resulting samples, NaOH (SH) and (NH4)2CO3 (AC) were used as precipitants, and a temperature range of 750–950 °C (tc) was applied for calcining the as-synthesized products. Depending on the synthesis conditions, the samples can be monophasic or diphasic and exhibit crystalline structure distortion. As the tc increases, the average size of o-YbFeO3 crystallites increases, which is in the 30–60 nm range. The samples' magnetism was not significantly affected by the synthesis conditions, and all displayed paramagnetic behavior, as evidenced by low values of coercive force (0.02–150.01 Oe) and net magnetization (0.41–0.54 emu·g−1); in this regard, the YbFeO3-AC-850 sample appeared to be superior, and the oxygen element preferred to face the sample's surface. The sample's morphology consists of oval-spherical-like grains with high agglomeration.