Long Range Charge Ordering in Magnetite Below the Verwey Transition

J. P. Wright; J. P. Attfield; P. G. Radaelli

doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.87.266401

Long Range Charge Ordering in Magnetite Below the Verwey Transition

Strongly Correlated Electrons 2009-11-07 v2

Authors: J. P. Wright , J. P. Attfield , P. G. Radaelli

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Abstract

The crystal structure of Fe3O4 below the 122 K Verwey transition has been refined using high-resolution X-ray and neutron powder diffraction data. The refinements give direct evidence for charge ordering (CO) over four independent octahedral Fe sites, two with a charge of +2.4 and the other two of +2.6. CO schemes consistent with our model do not meet the widely-accepted Anderson condition of minimum electrostatic repulsion. Instead we propose that CO is driven primarily by a [001] electronic instability, which opens a gap at the transition through a charge density wave mechanism.

Keywords

charge ordering phase transitions magnetic structure

Cite

@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0111119,
  title  = {Long Range Charge Ordering in Magnetite Below the Verwey Transition},
  author = {J. P. Wright and J. P. Attfield and P. G. Radaelli},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0111119},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

11 pages, 2 figures, to be published in PRL

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