Successive Phase Transitions in Fe2+ Ladder Compounds Sr2Fe3Ch2O3 (Ch = S, Se)

Kwing To Lai; Peter Adler; Yurii Prots; Zhiwei Hu; Chang-Yang Kuo; Tun-Wen Pi; Martin Valldor

doi:10.1021/acs.inorgchem.7b02042

Successive Phase Transitions in Fe²⁺ Ladder Compounds Sr₂Fe₃Ch₂O₃ (Ch = S, Se)

Inorg Chem. 2017 Oct 16;56(20):12606-12614. doi: 10.1021/acs.inorgchem.7b02042. Epub 2017 Oct 3.

Authors

Kwing To Lai^{1

2}, Peter Adler¹, Yurii Prots¹, Zhiwei Hu¹, Chang-Yang Kuo¹, Tun-Wen Pi³, Martin Valldor^{1

4}

Affiliations

¹ Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids , Nöthnitzer Strasse 40, 01187 Dresden, Germany.
² Department of Physics, The Chinese University of Hong Kong , Shatin, Hong Kong.
³ National Synchrotron Radiation Research Centre , Hsinchu 30076, Taiwan.
⁴ Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research , Helmholtz Strasse 20, 01069 Dresden, Germany.

PMID: 28972740
DOI: 10.1021/acs.inorgchem.7b02042

Abstract

Small single crystals of Sr₂Fe₃Ch₂O₃ (Ch = S, Se) have been synthesized by flux methods, and bulk materials have been obtained by solid state reactions. Both compounds are isostructural to the compound Sr₂Co₃S₂O₃ (space group Pbam), which contains a novel hybrid spin ladder: a combination of a 2-leg rectangular ladder and a necklace ladder. The 2-leg ladder acts as a well-defined magnetic entity, while intimate magnetic coupling to the necklace ladder induces three successive phase transitions in the range of 40-120 K in each composition (Ch = S or Se), as revealed by Mössbauer spectroscopy, thermodynamics, and magnetometry. The complex magnetic behaviors can be explained by the unique spin-lattice topology.