English

Quantum Spin Liquid in a depleted triangular lattice Iridate K$_x$Ir$_y$O$_2$

Strongly Correlated Electrons 2019-08-23 v1 Materials Science

Abstract

We report discovery of a new iridate family Kx_xIry_yO2_2 with depleted triangular lattice planes made up of edge sharing IrO6_6 octahedra separated by K planes. Such a material interpolates between the triangular and honeycomb lattices and is a new playground for Kitaev physics. The materials are Mott insulators with y=1x/4y = 1 - x/4. Physical property measurements for the x0.85x \approx 0.85 material are reported. Using magnetic susceptibility χ\chi versus temperature TT measurements we find Seff=1/2S_{eff} = 1/2 moments interacting strongly with a Weiss temperature θ180\theta \approx - 180~K and no magnetic order or spin freezing down to T=1.8T = 1.8~K\@. Heat capacity shows a broad maximum around 3030~K which is insensitive to magnetic fields and a TT-linear low temperature behaviour with γ10\gamma \sim 10~mJ/mol~K2^2. These results are consistent with a gapless QSL state in K0.85_{0.85}Ir0.79_{0.79}O2_2.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1908.08475,
  title  = {Quantum Spin Liquid in a depleted triangular lattice Iridate K$_x$Ir$_y$O$_2$},
  author = {Kavita Mehlawat and Yogesh Singh},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1908.08475},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

5 pages, 3 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-23T10:54:28.273Z