Abstract
The effect of Fe dopant content, x, on the magnetism of polycrystalline BaTi 1-x Fe x O 3-δ (BTFO) multiferroic samples was investigated using magnetization measurements in correlation with the crystallographic and local structures. The changes of coercivity and magnetization as functions of x are closely related to the variation of oxygen vacancy content,δ, which can be deduced from the Fe oxidation number estimation using Fe K-edge x-ray absorption spectroscopy. It is shown that although the samples exhibit ferromagnetic (FM) hysteresis at room temperature, a dominant paramagnetic phase coexisting with the FM phase makes it difficult to identify the FM contribution to the total magnetization. Spin-glass and/or superparamagnetic behavior may be ruled out due to the fact that both zero-field-cooled and field-cooled thermomagnetization curves almost totally overlap together over the whole range of measured temperatures. © 2012 American Institute of Physics.