Investigation Of Structural And Magnetic Properties Of Lanthanum Iron Oxide

Abstract

Lanthanum Iron Oxide (LaFeO3), a rare earth Perovskite magnetic material has shown great potential for industrial applications. This thesis presents an investigation on the influence of thermal annealing on the structural and magnetic properties of bulk samples of this material synthesized by High Energy Ball Milling followed by thermal annealing. X-ray Diffractometer (XRD) and Vibrating Sample Magnetometer (VSM) are instrumental in the structural and magnetic characterization. Findings show that the structural and magnetic properties of bulk LaFeO3 vary at different temperatures. Structural results show that sample is amorphous at lower temperature but polycrystalline at higher temperature. Crystallite size estimated in the nanometric scale increases with respect to increasing temperature. Magnetic Characterization results show that samples annealed at lower temperatures possess stronger magnetization than samples at intermediate temperature due to their difference in grain size and magnetization reversal process. Interestingly, magnetization becomes even stronger in samples annealed at higher temperature because they are fully crystalline with perfectly ordered spins.