Stoichiometric YFe2O4-\delta\ single crystals grown by the optical floating zone method

TL;DR

This paper reports the successful growth of stoichiometric YFe2O4-elta single crystals using the optical floating zone method, demonstrating their magnetic and structural properties, including charge and potential orbital order.

Contribution

It is the first to grow and characterize stoichiometric YFe2O4-elta single crystals with detailed magnetic and structural analysis.

Findings

Magnetization matches that of highly stoichiometric powder samples.

Observation of sharp superstructure reflections indicating long-range charge order.

Use of resonant x-ray diffraction to investigate orbital order possibilities.

Abstract

We report the growth of YFe2O4-\delta\ single crystals by the optical floating zone method, showing for the first time the same magnetization as highly stoichiometric (\delta = 0.00) powder samples and sharp superstructure reflections in single crystal x-ray diffraction. The latter can be attributed to three dimensional long-range charge ordering. Resonant x-ray diffraction at the Fe K-edge with full linear polarization analysis was used for the investigation of the possibility of orbital order.