Partitioning the Two-Leg Spin Ladder in Ba 2 Cu 1 - x Zn x TeO 6 : From Magnetic Order through Spin-Freezing to Paramagnetism
Ba CuTeO has attracted significant attention as it contains a two-leg spin ladder of Cu cations that lies in close proximity to a quantum critical point. Recently, Ba CuTeO has been shown to accommodate chemical substitutions, which can significantly tune its magnetic behavior. Here, we investigate...
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Published in | Chemistry of materials Vol. 35; no. 7; pp. 2752 - 2761 |
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Main Authors | , , , , , , , , , , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
United States
11.04.2023
|
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | Ba
CuTeO
has attracted significant attention as it contains a two-leg spin ladder of Cu
cations that lies in close proximity to a quantum critical point. Recently, Ba
CuTeO
has been shown to accommodate chemical substitutions, which can significantly tune its magnetic behavior. Here, we investigate the effects of substitution for non-magnetic Zn
impurities at the Cu
site, partitioning the spin ladders. Results from bulk thermodynamic and local muon magnetic characterization on the Ba
Cu
Zn
TeO
solid solution (0 ≤
≤ 0.6) indicate that Zn
partitions the Cu
spin ladders into clusters and can be considered using the percolation theory. As the average cluster size decreases with increasing Zn
substitution, there is an evolving transition from long-range order to spin-freezing as the critical cluster size is reached between
= 0.1 to
= 0.2, beyond which the behavior became paramagnetic. This demonstrates well-controlled tuning of the magnetic disorder, which is highly topical across a range of low-dimensional Cu
-based materials. However, in many of these cases, the chemical disorder is also relatively strong in contrast to Ba
CuTeO
and its derivatives. Therefore, Ba
Cu
Zn
TeO
provides an ideal model system for isolating the effect of defects and segmentation in low-dimensional quantum magnets. |
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ISSN: | 0897-4756 1520-5002 |
DOI: | 10.1021/acs.chemmater.2c02939 |