Structural Transition and Magnetic Anisotropy in α-RuCl₃

2023/11/07 by Kim, Subin, Horsley, Ezekiel, Ruff, Jacob P. C. +2
#FOS: Physical sciences #Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el)

paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2311.04000

Abstract

We report X-ray diffraction and magnetic susceptibility studies of the structural phase transition in α-RuCl₃. By utilizing a single crystal sample with predominantly single twin domain, we show that α-RuCl₃ goes from high-temperature C2/m structure to a rhombohedral structure with R3 symmetry at low temperature. While the defining feature of the structural transition is changing the stacking direction from the monoclinic a-axis to the b-axis, bond-anisotropy disappears when the structural change occurs, indicating that the local C₃ symmetry is restored within the honeycomb layer. The symmetry change is corroborated by the vanishing magnetic anisotropy in the low-temperature structure. Our study demonstrates that magnetic interaction is extremely sensitive to structural details in α-RuCl₃, which could explain the sample dependence found in this material.

Related

• Re-investigation of Moment Direction in a Kitaev Material α-RuCl₃
• Structure transition and zigzag magnetic order in Ir/Rh-substituted honeycomb lattice RuCl3
• Intermediate phases in α-RuCl₃ under in-plane magnetic field via interlayer spin interactions
• Magneto-optical study of metamagnetic transitions in the antiferromagnetic phase of α-RuCl₃
• The Saga of α-RuCl₃: Parameters, Models, and Phase Diagrams