Doping induced dimensionality reduction of the magnetic order in DyFe1-In O3

A series of DyFe1-xInxO3 (x = 0, 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.5, 0.6, 0.7, 0.8, 0.9, 1) polycrystalline samples have been prepared by the conventional solid reaction methods. The crystal structures, refined by the Fullprof, are found to be orthorhombic for 0 ≤ x ≤ 0.6 and hexagonal in the case of 0.7 ≤ x ≤ 1. The lattice constants are changed by the In ions doping, and a huge distortion of the magnetic sublattice was induced. The magnetization versus temperature curves are obtained for all the samples, at the temperature between 3 K and 300 K. The pure DyFeO3 sample undergoes a spin reorientation transition at around 50 K, whereas the doped In3+ ions significantly modify the phase transition. We reveal that such substitution retained the spin reorientation transition effect for x ≤ 0.8. We develop a formalism based on the molecular theory, giving explanation of the changes in the spin-reorientation temperature induced by the In-doping. Then, by performing density functional theory (DFT) calculation, we analyzed the magnetic phases for the hexagonal compounds. Furthermore, our findings indicate a type of Γ′4 - Γ′2 transition exists in the hexagonal Fe-In magnetic systems which directly point to a quasi-2 dimensional magnetic order.