Single crystals of the three-dimensional frustrated magnet and spin liquid candidate compound PbCuTe2O6 were grown using both the Travelling Solvent Floating Zone (TSFZ) and the Top-Seeded Solution Growth (TSSG) techniques. The growth conditions were optimized by investigating the thermal properties. The quality of the crystals was checked by polarized optical microscopy, X-ray Laue and X-ray powder diffraction, and compared to the polycrystalline samples. Excellent quality crystals were obtained by the TSSG method. Magnetic measurements of these crystals revealed a small anisotropy for different crystallographic directions in comparison with the previously reported data. The heat capacity of both single crystal and powder samples reveal a transition anomaly around 1 K. Curiously the position and magnitude of the transition are strongly dependent on the crystallite size and it is almost entirely absent for the smallest crystallites. A structural transition is suggested which accompanies the reported ferroelectric transition, and a scenario whereby it becomes energetically unfavourable in small crystallites is proposed.
@article{arxiv.2107.07219,
title = {Crystal growth, characterization and phase transition of PbCuTe$_2$O$_6$},
author = {A. R. N. Hanna and A. T. M. N. Islam and R. Feyerherm and K. Siemensmeyer and K. Karmakar and S. Chillal and B. Lake},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2107.07219},
year = {2021}
}