Tuning the magnetic phase transition above room temperature through Fe and Mn modification in gallium ferrite with reduced leakage current.

Modifying Fe and Mn contents in GaFeO3 (GFO) enhances the magnetic properties, increases the magnetic transition temperature (TC) and reduces the leakage current. Here, we report structural, magnetic, and leakage current characteristics of manganese-doped gallium ferrite with different Fe-content, i.e. Ga2−xFexO3 (1 ≤ x ≤ 1.4) system. Structural characterization reveals that all the samples retain the orthorhombic phase with space group Pc21n for above amounts of doping. Magnetization of the samples with respect to temperature shows the lower magnetic transition temperature (TC) for pure GFO, i.e. 220 K, which increases to 345 K above room temperature (RT) for 2% Mn-doped Ga0.6Fe1.4O3 (GFMO3). Higher remanent magnetization (∼16 emu g−1) with a lower coercive field (∼4 kOe) is obtained for Mn-doped Ga0.6Fe1.4O3. We found the decrease of leakage current with doping of Mn. The observation of multiferroicity in these single-phase materials (i.e. GFO3 and GFMO3) at RT make them potential candidates for memory, multifunctional, and spintronics device applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]