Influence of Na doping on the magnetic properties of LaFeO3 powders and dielectric properties of LaFeO3 ceramics prepared by citric sol-gel method

The emergence of ferromagnetism in perovskite oxide LaFeO3 nanoparticles and colossal dielectric response in ceramics has inspired researchers to study the effect of various dopants on the magnetic and dielectric properties of LaFeO3 powders and ceramics. However, the influence of alkali element Na doping has not been studied yet, and the origin of such ferromagnetic behavior is still ambiguous. The primary objective of the present work is to elucidate the effect of Na doping on the magnetic properties of La1−xNaxFeO3 (x=0, 0.1 and 0.2) powders and dielectric properties of corresponding ceramics prepared by citric sol-gel method. FE-SEM results showed that the introduction of Na dopant actually resulted in the formation of nonstoichiometric La1−xFeO3 and x/2 Na2O. Compared to the canted AFM behavior for the pure powder, ferromagnetic behavior with enhanced magnetization of 2.11 emu/g at 10 kOe could be obviously observed at room temperature for the powder with x=0.2. XPS measurement suggested nonstoichiometric Fe/La ratio which leads to the distortion of lattice structure and enlarged canting angle between the two AFM coupled Fe sublattice should be responsible for the enhancement of magnetization in the Na-doped samples. Meanwhile, the introduction of Na dopant lowered the growth temperature of grains of the parent LFO and resulted in larger average grain size, which in turn leaded to great enhancement of ε′ into the order of 105 at 100 Hz at the cost of high tanδ for the Na-doped ceramics.