Ordering and Antiferromagnetism in Ferrites

The octahedral sites in the spinel structure form one of the anomalous lattices in which it is possible to achieve essentially perfect short-range order while maintaining a finite entropy. In such a lattice nearest-neighbor forces alone can never lead to long-range order, while calculations indicate that even the longrange Coulomb forces are only 5% effective in creating long-range order. This is shown to have many possible consequences both for antiferromagnetism in "normal" ferrites and for ordering in "inverse" ferrites.