Persistence of the valence bond glass state in the double perovskites Ba2-xSrxYMoO6

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Ferromagnetism below 10 K in Mn doped BiTe

Ferromagnetism is observed below 10 K in [Bi0.75Te0.125Mn0.125]Te. This material has the BiTe structure, which is made from the stacking of two Te-Bi-Te-Bi-Te blocks and one Bi-Bi block per unit cell. Crystal structure analysis shows that Mn is localized in the Bi2 blocks, and is accompanied by an equal amount of TeBi anti-site occupancy in the Bi2Te3 blocks. These TeBi anti-site defects greatly enhance the Mn solubility. This is demonstrated by comparison of the [Bi1-xMnx]Te and [Bi1-2xTexMnx]Te series; in the former, the solubility is limited to x = 0.067, while the latter has xmax = 0.125. The magnetism in [Bi1-xMnx]Te changes little with x, while that for [Bi1-2xTexMnx]Te shows a clear variation, leading to ferromagnetism for x > 0.067. Magnetic hysteresis and the anomalous Hall Effect are observed for the ferromagnetic samples.Comment: Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Valence bond glass on an fcc lattice in the double perovskite Ba2YMoO6

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Evidence for hard and soft substructures in thermoelectric SnSe

SnSe is a topical thermoelectric material with a low thermal conductivity which is linked to its unique crystal structure. We use low-temperature heat capacity measurements to demonstrate the presence of two characteristic vibrational energy scales in SnSe with Debye temperatures thetaD1 = 345(9) K and thetaD2 = 154(2) K. These hard and soft substructures are quantitatively linked to the strong and weak Sn-Se bonds in the crystal structure. The heat capacity model predicts the temperature evolution of the unit cell volume, confirming that this two-substructure model captures the basic thermal properties. Comparison with phonon calculations reveals that the soft substructure is associated with the low energy phonon modes that are responsible for the thermal transport. This suggests that searching for materials containing highly divergent bond distances should be a fruitful route for discovering low thermal conductivity materials.Comment: Accepted by Applied Physics Letter

Direct evidence for the magnetic ordering of Nd ions in NdFeAsO by high resolution inelastic neutron scattering

We investigated the low energy excitations in the parent compound NdFeAsO of the Fe-pnictide superconductor in the $\mu$eV range by a back scattering neutron spectrometer. The energy scans on a powder NdFeAsO sample revealed inelastic peaks at E = 1.600 $\pm 0.003 \mu$eV at T = 0.055 K on both energy gain and energy loss sides. The inelastic peaks move gradually towards lower energy with increasing temperature and finally merge with the elastic peak at about 6 K. We interpret the inelastic peaks to be due to the transition between hyperfine-split nuclear level of the $^{143}$Nd and $^{145}$Nd isotopes with spin $I = 7/2$. The hyperfine field is produced by the ordering of the electronic magnetic moment of Nd at low temperature and thus the present investigation gives direct evidence of the ordering of the Nd magnetic sublattice of NdFeAsO at low temperature

Magnetism and structure of LixCoO2 and comparison to NaxCoO2

The magnetic properties and structure of LixCoO2 for x between 0.5 and 1.0 are reported. Co4+ is found to be high-spin in LixCoO2 for x between 0.94 and 1.0 and low-spin for x between 0.50 and 0.78. Weak antiferromagnetic coupling is observed, increasing in strength as more Co4+ is introduced. At an x value of about 0.65, the temperature-independent contribution to the magnetic susceptibility and the electronic contribution to the specific heat are largest. Neutron diffraction analysis reveals that the lithium oxide layer expands perpendicular to the basal plane and the Li ions displace from their ideal octahedral sites with decreasing x. A comparison of the structures of the NaxCoO2 and LixCoO2 systems reveals that the CoO2 layer changes substantially with alkali content in the former but is relatively rigid in the latter. Further, the CoO6 octahedra in LixCoO2 are less distorted than those in NaxCoO2. We postulate that these structural differences strongly influence the physical properties in the two systems

Theoretical investigation of magnetic order in ReOFeAs, Re = Ce, Pr

Density functional theory (DFT) calculations are carried out on ReOFeAs, Re = Ce, Pr, the parent compounds of the high-T$_c$ superconductors ReO$_{1-x}$F$_{x}$FeAs, in order to determine the magnetic order of the ground state. It is found that the magnetic moments on the Fe sites adopt a collinear antiferromagnetic order, similar to the case of LaOFeAs. Within the generalized gradient approximation along with Coulomb onsite repulsion (GGA+U), we show that the Re magnetic moments also adopt an antiferromagnetic order for which, within the ReO layer, same spin Re sites lie along a zigzag line perpendicular to the Fe spin stripes. While within GGA the Re 4f band crosses the Fermi level, upon inclusion of onsite Coulomb interaction the 4f band splits and moves away from the Fermi level, making ReOFeAs a Mott insulator.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Iron spin-reorientation transition in NdFeAsO

The low-temperature magnetic structure of NdFeAsO has been revisited using neutron powder diffraction and symmetry analysis using the Sarah representational analysis program. Four magnetic models with one magnetic variable for each of the Nd and Fe sublattices were tested. The best fit was obtained using a model with Fe moments pointing along the c-direction, and Nd moments along the a-direction. This signals a significant interplay between rare-earth and transition metal magnetism, which results in a spin-reorientation of the Fe sublattice upon ordering of the Nd moments. All models that fit the data well, including collinear models with more than one magnetic variable per sublattice, were found to have an Fe moment of 0.5 BM and a Nd moment of 0.9 BM, demonstrating that the low-temperature Fe moment is not substantially enhanced compared to the spin-density wave (SDW) state.Comment: accepted to J. Phys.: Cond. Ma