Low-temperature anomalous magnetic behavior of Co2TiO4 and Co2SnO4

Abstract

We report the low-temperature anomalous magnetic behavior of ferrimagnetic spinels cobalt orthotitanate (Co2TiO4), which exhibits magnetic compensation behavior across 31.74 K, and cobalt orthostannate (Co2SnO4) exhibiting two sequential magnetic transitions, namely (i) ferrimagnetic to paramagnetic transition with Neel temperature T-N similar to 41 K and reentrant spin-glass behavior with glass transition temperature T-SG similar to 39 K. The Arrott plot (H/M versus M-2) criterion has been used to extricate the order of sequential magnetic transitions occurring below TN. Negative slopes of the Arrott plots below 32 K, metamagnetic-like character of the M-H isotherms, anomalies in the specific-heat (C-P T-1 versus T) below 15 K, and a zero-crossover of isothermal magnetic-entropychange (Delta S) signify the presence of pseudo first-order discontinuous magnetic phase transition in the low-temperature regime 5K <= T <= 32 K. The dc- and ac-susceptibilities of both Co2TiO4 and Co2SnO4 are interpreted in terms of frozen-spin-clusters, which are responsible for very large magnitudes of the coercivity H-C similar to 20 kOe and bipolar-exchange bias H-EB similar to -20 kOe observed below 10 K. Published by AIP Publishing.