Comment on “Doping-induced canted ferromagnetism in pyrochlore titanate”
Phys. Rev. B 114, 196401 – Published 6 October, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/qb5d-pp58
Abstract
In a recent paper [D. Sahu et al., Phys. Rev. B 112, 144412 (2025)], claims were made about (1) the appearance of noncoplanar and ferromagnetic ordering below 146 K in solid solutions with , 0.07, and 0.1, and (2) discovering an effective way of installing ferromagnetism in nonmagnetic pyrochlores through Cr doping at the nonmagnetic Ti site. In this Comment, we draw attention to the fact that —a well-known antiferromagnetic material with weak ferromagnetic properties—has a Néel temperature () of 140–142 K. The very close match of the magnetic transitions of and gives strong evidence that all ferromagnetism in originates from the impurity. We prepared simple mixtures of and compounds containing 0.14 and 0.66 wt. % of and measured the magnetic properties of such mixtures and individual and compounds. Using the reported magnetic irreversibility values and our experimental values, we estimated the amount of to be below 0.1 wt. % in the original work. It is difficult to detect such levels of impurities with laboratory powder X-ray diffraction. On the other hand, temperature-dependent magnetic measurements at small magnetic fields are much more sensitive to impurities with ferromagneticlike properties.