Reduced magnetization and magneto-resistance in Sr2Fe1–xCrxMoO6 with increasing Cr substitution

We report the results from magnetization and magneto-resistance measurements on polycrystalline Sr2Fe1–xCrxMoO6. A decrease in the saturation moment per f.u. is observed, which we attribute to site dilution for x ⩽ 0.4 and anti-site disorder for x ⩾ 0.6 along with a reduced Cr3+ saturation moment when compared with Fe3+. The magneto-resistance also decreases with increasing Cr substitution. This may be due to increased disorder leading to an increase in spin-scattering near the spin-tunnelling grain boundaries for x ⩽ 0.4. There is no evidence for spin-tunnelling for x ⩾ 0.6 and the magneto-resistance can be attributed to a reduction in intra-grain spin-scattering with increasing magnetic field.