Revisiting the properties of delafossite CuCrO2: A single crystal study

Maria Poienar (1, 2) , Vincent Hardy (2) , Bohdan Kundys (2) , Kiran Singh (2) , Antoine Maignan (2) , Françoise Damay (3) , Christine Martin (2)

1 NIRDElCM - National Institute for Research and Development in Electrochemistry and Condensed Matter
2 CRISMAT - Laboratoire de cristallographie et sciences des matériaux
3 LLB - UMR 12 - Laboratoire Léon Brillouin

Platelet-like single-crystals of delafossite CuCrO2 have been successfully grown and characterised by X-ray diffraction and pole figures, scanning electron and atomic force microscopy. Transport measurements reveal that the resistivity is highly anisotropic, with a ratio of about 35 at 300 K between the in- and out-of-plane directions, reflecting the layered crystal structure. The magnetization and specific heat data show that CuCrO2 undergoes a unique antiferromagnetic transition at TN=24.0 K, in contrast to a recent report on CuCrO2 single-crystals [16] showing the existence of two magnetic transitions, TN1=24.2 K and TN2=23.6 K, depending on the orientation of the applied magnetic field along and perpendicular to c, respectively.

Keywords: Morphology; Delafossite; Magnetic properties; Electric properties

Domains: Chemical Sciences; Material chemistry

Maria Poienar, Vincent Hardy, Bohdan Kundys, Kiran Singh, Antoine Maignan, et al.. Revisiting the properties of delafossite CuCrO2: A single crystal study. Journal of Solid State Chemistry, 2012, 185, pp.56-61. ⟨10.1016/j.jssc.2011.10.047⟩. ⟨hal-02264057⟩