Itinerant Antiferromagnetism in RuO2

Bulk rutile RuO2 has long been considered a Pauli paramagnet. Here, in this article, we report that RuO2 exhibits a hitherto undetected lattice distortion below approximately 900 K. The distortion is accompanied by antiferromagnetic order up to at least 300 K with a small room temperature magnetic m...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Physical review letters Vol. 118; no. 7
Main Authors:	Berlijn, Tom, Snijders, Paul C., Delaire, Oliver A., Zhou, H. -D., Maier, Thomas A., Cao, H. -B., Chi, S. -X., Matsuda, Masaaki, Wang, Yang, Koehler, Michael R., Kent, Paul R. C., Weitering, Hanno H.
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	United States American Physical Society (APS) 15-02-2017
Subjects:	CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND SUPERFLUIDITY MATERIALS SCIENCE
Online Access:	Get full text
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Summary:	Bulk rutile RuO2 has long been considered a Pauli paramagnet. Here, in this article, we report that RuO2 exhibits a hitherto undetected lattice distortion below approximately 900 K. The distortion is accompanied by antiferromagnetic order up to at least 300 K with a small room temperature magnetic moment of approximately 0.05μB as evidenced by polarized neutron diffraction. Density functional theory plus U(DFT+U) calculations indicate that antiferromagnetism is favored even for small values of the Hubbard U of the order of 1 eV. The antiferromagnetism may be traced to a Fermi surface instability, lifting the band degeneracy imposed by the rutile crystal field. The combination of high Néel temperature and small itinerant moments make RuO2 unique among ruthenate compounds and among oxide materials in general.
Bibliography:	AC05-00OR22725; AC02-05CH11231 USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)
ISSN:	0031-9007
DOI:	10.1103/PhysRevLett.118.077201