Electric and magnetic polarizabilities of hexagonal Ln(2)CuTiO(6)(Ln = Y, Dy, Ho, Er, and Yb)

Choudhury, Debraj and Hazarika, Abhijit and Venimadhav, Adyam and Kakarla, Chandrasekhar and Delaney, Kris T and Devi, Sujatha P and Mondal, P and Nirmala, R and Gopalakrishnan , J and Spaldin, Nicola A and Waghmare, Umesh V and Sarma, DD (2010) Electric and magnetic polarizabilities of hexagonal Ln(2)CuTiO(6)(Ln = Y, Dy, Ho, Er, and Yb). In: Physical Review B: Condensed Matter and Materials Physics, 82 (13).

PDF Electric.pdf - Published Version Restricted to Registered users only Download (460kB) | Request a copy

Abstract

We investigated the rare-earth transition-metal oxide series, Ln(2)CuTiO(6) (Ln = Y, Dy, Ho, Er, and Yb), crystallizing in the hexagonal structure with noncentrosymmetric P6(3)cm space group for possible occurrences of multiferroic properties. Our results show that while these compounds, except Ln = Y, exhibit a low-temperature antiferromagnetic transition due to the ordering of the rare-earth moments, the expected ferroelectric transition is frustrated by the large size difference between Cu and Ti at the B site. Interestingly, this leads these compounds to attain a rare and unique combination of desirable paraelectric properties with high dielectric constants, low losses, and weak temperature and frequency dependencies. First-principles calculations establish these exceptional properties result from a combination of two effects. A significant difference in the MO5 polyhedral sizes for M = Cu and M = Ti suppress the expected cooperative tilt pattern of these polyhedra, required for the ferroelectric transition, leading to relatively large values of the dielectric constant for every compound investigated in this series. Additionally, it is shown that the majority contribution to the dielectric constant arises from intermediate-frequency polar vibrational modes, making it relatively stable against any temperature variation. Changes in the temperature stability of the dielectric constant among different members of this series are shown to arise from changes in relative contributions from soft polar modes.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Publication:	Physical Review B: Condensed Matter and Materials Physics
Publisher:	The American Physical Society
Additional Information:	Copyright of this article belongs to The American Physical Society.
Department/Centre:	Division of Chemical Sciences > Solid State & Structural Chemistry Unit Division of Physical & Mathematical Sciences > Physics
Date Deposited:	11 Nov 2010 10:41
Last Modified:	11 Nov 2010 10:41
URI:	http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/33644

Actions (login required)

View Item