Structural, magnetic and semiconducting properties of Fe doped SrSnO <inf>3</inf>

SrSn1-xFexO3 (x = 0.03, 0.04, 0.05) was prepared by solid state synthesis technique. The structural, magnetic and transport properties of the doped samples were investigated. The Reitveld refinement of the X-Ray data for all the compositions was performed. The parent compound SrSnO3 is a diamagnet. Room temperature ferromagnetism was observed in polycrystalline Fe doped SrSnO3. At room temperature the compositions SrSn0.96Fe0.04O3 and SrSn 0.95Fe0.05O3 were ferromagnetic in nature. At 1.8 K all the compositions show ferromagnetic ordering. The theoretical electronic structure calculation showed that the Fermi energy (EF) passes through the minority spin impurity states indicating the system to be half metallic. All the compositions show semiconducting behaviour in the resistivity measurements and with an increase in Fe concentration the conductivity of the sample increases as the activation energy decreases. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.