Floating Zone Growth of Large Single Crystals of SrFeO_3-x

TL;DR

This paper reports the successful growth of large single crystals of SrFeO_3-x using floating-zone technique, enabling advanced studies of its magnetic and conductive properties.

Contribution

It introduces a method for growing large SrFeO_3-x single crystals suitable for detailed physical property measurements.

Findings

Large single crystals of SrFeO_3-x were successfully grown.

Crystals are suitable for neutron scattering and other techniques.

The method overcomes previous size limitations due to phase transitions.

Abstract

The Fe^{4+}-containing cubic perovskite phase SrFeO_3-x is of interest both for its high-temperature, oxygen-conducting properties as a solid oxide fuel cell component, and at low temperatures, where it exhibits a plethora of helical magnetic phases and a candidate Skyrmion lattice. However, a sequence of structural phase transitions encountered on cooling to room temperature has limited the size of single crystals. We report the floating-zone growth and oxygen-annealing of multiple-cubic-centimetre-sized single crystals of SrFeO_3-x, suitable for inelastic neutron scattering and other measurement techniques requiring large sample volumes.