Influence of Heavy Fermion Ytterbium Substitution on the Electronic and Crystal Properties of the Frustrated Magnet CuFe

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X-RAY absorption spectroscopy (XAS) is a powerful technique that probes electronic and bonding properties of elements. The strength of the technique attracts many scientists’ attention who would like to find out necessary tools for their researches. X-ray absorption fine structure spectroscopy (XAFS) technique provides more detailed data with its two spectral parts than other techniques. A collected XAFS spectra can be processed in two parts; low photon energy part of the interested spectra which is called as the XANES (X-ray Absorption Near-Edge Spectroscopy) and beyond that part the second regime EXAFS (Extended-XAFS) region lies. The XANES region/part can provide fruitful information about the source atom’s environment, i.e., the bonding with the neighboring atoms, electronic structure of the interested atom in the materials and support the determination of local atomic arrangements. The data from the EXAFS region can yield precious information about the crystal structure of any material disregarding its crystallinity (crystalline or non-crystalline).

OSMAN MURAT OZKENDIR is with Mersin University, Tarsus Faculty of Technology, Energy Systems Engineering, 33400, Tarsus, Turkey. Contact e-mail: [email protected] Manuscript submitted November 28, 2016.

METALLURGICAL AND MATERIALS TRANSACTIONS A

The electronic and magnetic properties of iron oxides render them a popular class of transition metal oxides. Iron-based technologies have attracted significant interest from researchers for electronic and optoelectronic devices, mineralogy, magnetic materials, batteries, semiconductor materials, etc.[1–5] The high electronic interplay in the molecular structure of iron and its oxides reveals exciting physical phenomena. Therefore, new studies based on the strong electron correlations in transition metals are supported by the 4f group elements, i.e., rare earths (RE), and researches with high impact on characteristics of these materials were reported in several papers.[6–8] In a material containing d–f levels, the d shells of the transition metals are the main playground for strong electronic interactions with the outer shell electrons of the neighboring atoms. Due to the presence of densely localized electrons at the narrow f-energy bands, the interplay between d–f systems attracts huge attention due to the possibility to yield rich scientific results for technology.[9] In this study, crystal, electronic, and magnetic properties of CuFeO2 were investigated to determine the influence of heavy fermion Ytterbium substitution (with a decrease in Cu atomic concentration) with the general formula YbxCu1xFeO2. Delafossite CuFeO2 is a member of low-dimensional transition metal oxides (TMO) with a geometrically frustrated magnetic structure [TN = 11 K and 14 K (262 °C and 259 °C)] and forms in Rhombohedral ‘‘R-3m’’ crystal geometry with slightly distorted hexagonal layers.[2–4] Due to the

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Ybx Cu1-x FeO2

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