Moessbauer spectroscopy, crystallographic, magnetic and electronic structure of ZnFe3N and InFe3N

In this work, mechanical alloying is used to obtain the γ'-Zn0.6Fe3.4N perovskite nitrides. A single-phase γ'-ZnFe3N was not obtained but indium substitution leads to a single-phase compound not fully ordered. X-ray diffraction and Moessbauer measurements were performed on these compounds. We found that InFe3N is paramagnetic while magnetic measurements made at low temperature give 4.65 μB as the magnetic moment per unit formula for zinc substitution. Self-consistent LMTO calculations were performed for γ'-ZnFe3N and γ'-InFe3N fully ordered compounds. Ferromagnetic calculations for γ'-InFe3N give null magnetic moment, that is, paramagnetic is the stable phase. For γ'-ZnFe3N, the calculated magnetic moment was 3.60 μB per unit formula. Also, theoretical results, in the zinc case, were compared with Moessbauer results in terms of isomer shift and magnetic hyperfine field