The bond lengths in LaFeO3

The crystal structure of LaFeO3 has been refined from x-ray data taken from a highly twinned crystal. The least-squares refinement was carried out on 695 independent reflections which gave an R index of 0.035. LaFeO3 has the orthorhombic perovskite-like structure, though the rare earth polyhedron is quite distorted relative to the ideal cubic arrangement. Our results indicate that in contrast to the other members of the orthoferrite series the coordination number of the lanthanum atoms is no longer 8. The Fe octahedron is only slightly distorted and the average FeO and OO distances are 2.006 Å and 2.837 Å, respectively.