The interplay between covalency and magnetism is non-trivial and can be harnessed for designing new functional magnetic materials. Based on a survey using density functional calculations, we show that TM\unicodex2013O bond covalency can increase the total magnetic moment of spinel compounds of TMFe2O4 composition (TM=V−Ni,Nb−Pd) which are isomorphic to the much-researched magnetite. Accordingly, PdFe2O4 was found to exhibit the highest magnetic moment of 7.809 μB per formula unit which is approximately twice that of Fe3O4 with Tc predicted to be well above ambient. We further propose a practical method for synthesising PdFe2O4.
@article{arxiv.2004.10948,
title = {Covalency a Pathway for Achieving High Magnetisation in $TMFe_2O_4$ Compounds},
author = {M. H. N. Assadi and H. Katayama-Yoshida},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2004.10948},
year = {2020}
}