https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/s13360-025-06092-8
Regular Article
The influence of rare earth doping on the structure, magnetic properties, and application of LaFeO3 nanoparticles
Materials Science Lab (1), Physics Department, Faculty of Science, Cairo University, Giza, Egypt
a mmarmsci@gmail.com, mmarmsci@cu.edu.eg
Received:
21
July
2024
Accepted:
5
February
2025
Published online:
11
March
2025
The perovskites La1-xRxFeO3 (x = 0.0 and 0.1; M: Sm3+ and Gd3+) were synthesized using the citrate method. The X-ray diffraction reveals that the samples were prepared in a single phase orthorhombic structure with an average crystallite size of 42–46 nm. The field emission scanning electron microscope studied the morphology of La1-xRxFeO3 perovskites and indicated the presence of pores on the surface of nanoparticles. The magnetization of LaFeO3 has a strong effect on the doping La3+ site by Sm3+ and Gd3+ ions. The saturation magnetization increased from 0.57 emu/g for LaFeO3 to 1.27 emu/g for La0.90Sm0.10FeO3; while, the remnant magnetization decreased from 0.111 emu/g for LaFeO3 to 0.026 emu/g for La0.90Gd0.10FeO3. The samples have antiferromagnetic with weak ferromagnetic properties. The presence of Sm3+ and Gd3+ ions at the expense of La3+ leads to tilting the FeO6 octahedron and increasing the canting angle between Fe3+ –O2–Fe3+. The La1-xRxFeO3 nanoparticles have a good removal efficiency for removing highly toxic Cr6+ ions from water using a low-cost and eco-friendly adsorption method. The removal efficiency of La0.90Gd0.10FeO3 is 88.2% at pH 5. The Langmuir model is the best fit model with the experimental data.
© The Author(s) 2025
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
