Octahedral cation site disorder effects on magnetization in double-perovskite Sr2FeMoO6:: Monte Carlo simulation study

Monte Carlo simulation studies are performed to examine the implications of octahedral cation (Fe, Mo) site disorder for magnetization in the double-perovskite Sr2FeMoO6. Correlations between the near-neighbor cation distributions and the spin distributions are identified to gain insight into the spin arrangement within, and on the periphery of a given transition element cation cluster. It is shown that the drop in the magnetic moment is nearly linear with the increase in the mis-site defect concentration for the case of randomly created defects. Implications of the concomitant presence of mis-site defects and oxygen vacancies are also analyzed. (C) 1999 American Institute of Physics. [S0003-6951(99)01330-3].