Iron vacancy effect on the magnetization of YbFe₂O₄

Abstract

We report the effect of iron vacancies on the magnetic property of spin and charge ordered system YbFe₂O₄ single crystals. The excess amount of iron compensates for the evaporation of iron during crystal growth. We concluded that samples grown with the standard method contain iron vacancies of more than 10%. It is considered that increasing the iron in the starting material recovers the iron stoichiometry, and the proper magnetic property appears. With recovery of the chemical stoichiometry, the magnetic hysteresis loop changes from a double loop to a single loop, which indicates the development of spin coherence and the appearance of a large ferrimagnetic domain. The anomaly found in the thermomagnetization curve at approximately 150 K, the so-called T_LT transition, disappears with better stoichiometry. This fact indicates that T_LT is not a kind of phase transition but an effect of iron vacancy. Our discovery demonstrates that most of the crystals used in RFe₂O₄ research might contain many iron vacancies. The confused discussions on this material about the spin order model, the charge order model, and so on might reconsider such chemical stoichiometry, including iron vacancies.