Gallium iron oxide (Ga_2-xFe_xO₃, 0.7 ≤ x ≤ 1.4) is a piezoelectric ferromagnetic compound exhibiting large magnetoelectric (ME) effect. These kind of magnetoelectric materials find applications in new kind of multistate non-volatile memories such as magnetically tunable ferroelectric random access memories, electrically tunable magnetic random access memories and high frequency filters, etc.  Single crystals of Ga_2−xFe_xO₃ with  x = 0.8, 1 and 1.2 were successfully grown by a Optical Floating Zone (OFZ) method under a high oxygen pressure of 9–10 atm. Figure 1 shows the picture of as grown GaFeO₃ single crystal. From the powder X-ray diffraction measurements, it was confirmed that the grown crystals are in single phase. All the peaks were indexed by the Pc21n orthorhombic unit cell of Ga_2−xFe_xO₃. Lattice parameters were obtained by Rietveld refinement. The chemical compositions of the crystals were determined by energy dispersive X-ray spectrum (EDAX). Uniform growth steps were seen on the surface of the crystal along the growth direction. Etching studies were carried out at various temperatures with H₃PO₄ and mixture of H₃PO₄ and HNO₃ as etchants. Etch pit rows were observed to be circular and shallow. With increase in temperature of the etchant, the time to nucleate an etch pit decreased. Figure 2 shows the variation of dielectric constant (ε’) and dielectric loss factor (tan δ) with temperature at different frequencies for GaFeO₃. ε’ clearly showed a Debye-like relaxation and enhancement of hopping conduction. With increase in x for Ga_2-xFe_xO₃, ε’ and tan δ increases considerably. Magnetization showed a well saturated hysteresis loop at room temperature for the single crystals which are investigated in detail.

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