Abstract
Ten compounds belonging to the series of oxygen-deficient perovskite oxides Ca2Fe2–xMnxO5 and CaSrFe2–xMnxO5+y, where x = 1/2, 2/3, and 1 and y ≈ 0–0.5, were synthesized and investigated with respect to the ordering of oxygen vacancies on both local and long-range length scales and the effect on crystal structure and magnetic properties. For the set with y ≈ 0 the oxygen vacancies always order in the long-range sense to form the brownmillerite structure containing alternating layers of octahedrally and tetrahedrally coordinated cations. However, there is a change in symmetry from Pnma to Icmm upon substitution of Sr for one Ca for all x, indicating local Td chain (vacancy) disorder. In the special case of CaSrFeMnO5 the neutron diffraction peaks broaden, indicating only short-range structural order on a length scale of 160 Å. This reveals a systematic progression from Ca2FeMnO5 (Pnma, well-ordered tetrahedral chains) to CaSrFeMnO5 (Icmm, disordered tetrahedral chains, overall short-range order) to Sr2FeMnO5 (Pm3m, destruction of tetrahedral chains in a long-range sense). Systematic changes occur in the magnetic properties as well. While long-range antiferromagnetic order is preserved, the magnetic transition temperature, Tc, decreases for the same x when Sr substitutes for one Ca. A review of the changes in Tc for the series Ca2Fe2–xMxO5, taking into account the tetrahedral/octahedral site preferences for the various M3+ ions, leads to a partial understanding of the origin of magnetic order in these materials in terms of a layered antiferromagnetic model. While in all cases the preferred magnetic moment direction is (010) at low temperatures, there is a cross over for x = 0.5 to (100) with increasing temperature for both the Ca2Fe2–xMnxO5 and the CaSrFe2–xMnxO5 series. For the y > 0 phases, while a brownmillerite ordering of oxygen vacancies is preserved for the Ca2 phases, a disordered Pm3m cubic perovskite structure is always found when Sr is substituted for one Ca. Long-range magnetic order is also lost, giving way to spin glass or cluster-glass-like behavior below 50 K. For the x = 0.5 phase, neutron pair distribution function (NPDF) studies show a local structure related to brownmillerite ordering of oxygen vacancies. Neutron diffraction data at 3.8 K show a broad magnetic feature, incommensurate with any multiple of the chemical lattice, and with a correlation length (magnetic domain) of 6.7(4) Å.
