We report on a strain-induced martensitic transformation, accompanied by a suppression of magnetic order in epitaxial films of chemically disordered FeRh. X-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy and electronic structure calculations reveal that the lowering of symmetry (from cubic to tetragonal) imposed by the epitaxial relation leads to a further, unexpected, tetragonal-to-orthorhombic transition, triggered by a band-Jahn-Teller-type lattice instability. The collapse of magnetic order is a direct consequence of this structural change, which upsets the subtle balance between ferromagnetic nearest-neighbor interactions arising from Fe-Rh hybridization and frustrated antiferromagnetic coupling among localized Fe moments at larger distances.
@article{arxiv.1602.08933,
title = {Tailoring Magnetic Frustration in Strained Epitaxial FeRh Films},
author = {Ralf Witte and Robert Kruk and Markus E. Gruner and Richard A. Brand and Di Wang and Sabine Schlabach and Andre Beck and Virgil Provenzano and Rossitza Pentcheva and Heiko Wende and Horst Hahn},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1602.08933},
year = {2016}
}
Comments
9 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in Physical Review B