Effect of Ca 2 MnO 4 on the magnetic and electric properties in Ca 3 Mn 2 O 7 ceramics prepared with different sintering temperature

Hybrid improper ferroelectricity Ca 3 Mn 2 O 7 is the promising multiferroic materials, which has attracted considerable attention due to their potential applications in areas such as electronic devices and storage media. The magnetic and electric properties of the layered perovskite Ca 3 Mn 2 O 7 ceramics with different proportions of single -layer Ca 2 MnO 4 phase synthesized by solid state reaction within adjusting the sintering temperature have been investigated. The x-ray diffraction patterns and the characteristic of magnetic transition from magnetization curves show that the ratio of Ca 2 MnO 4 is reduced from 22.9 % of sintering at 1200 degrees C to 0 % of sintering at 1300 degrees C, which implies that the narrow suitable sintering temperature is the most factor for preparation of pure Ca 3 Mn 2 O 7 ceramic samples. The ferroelectricity of all samples was investigated and the ferroelectricity decreased with the increase of Ca 2 MnO 4 content due to the presence of non-ferroelectric Ca 2 MnO 4 phase. The magnetoelectric coupling effect was discussed by the magnetization induced from the electric field. The results speculated that a small amount of Ca 2 MnO 4 can improve the magnetoelectric coupling effect due to the interface effect in multiphase materials, which suggests that a new method to enhance the magnetoelectric coupling effect in Ca 3 Mn 2 O 7 system.