Possibility of relaxor-type ferroelectricity in delafossite CuCrO2 near room temperature
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Authorship statement
All persons who meet authorship criteria are listed as authors, and all authors certify that they have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for the content, including participation in the concept, design, analysis, writing, or revision of the manuscript.
1. Introduction
Transition metal oxides exhibit an abundance of fascinating physical properties covering a vast range of phenomena in solid-state physics [[1], [2], [3], [4]] [[1], [2], [3], [4]] [[1], [2], [3], [4]]. Multiferroicity is one of these properties that is currently in the focus of material science. Multiferroics (MFs) are the class of materials that exhibit cross-coupling between at least two ferroic orders, viz. ferromagnetic and ferroelectric, giving rise to potential technological applications
Experimental section
Ceramic sample of CCO was synthesized via a solid-state reaction method. Stoichiometric amounts of high purity raw materials Cu2O (99.9%) and Cr2O3 (99.9%) were taken and grounded thoroughly in liquid medium (Propanol). The dried mixture was heated at 1200 °C for 12 h in the air with a heating rate of 5 °C/min. Calcined powder was mixed with a binder and pressed into pellets followed by sintering at 1200 °C for 24 h. The density of these pellets was found to be 88% of the theoretical density
X-ray diffraction
Fig. 1(a) shows the x-ray diffraction (XRD) pattern of the CCO sample. All the XRD peaks have been identified with a rhombohedral unit cell (R-3m space group). No additional peaks are observed in the XRD pattern, confirming the phase purity of the prepared sample. Lattice parameters as obtained from the refinement are a = b = 2.9748(2) Å, c = 17.1027(16) Å. The volume of the unit cell is found to be 131.078(2) Å3. Since in delafossites, the lattice constant along the c-axis is unusually large
Conclusion
In the present investigation, single-phase ceramic CCO sample has been successfully synthesized by a solid-state reaction method. X-ray diffraction measurements have confirmed phase purity. The appearance of the dielectric anomaly and its frequency dispersion indicates the presence of relaxor-type ferroelectricity in the CCO system near room temperature. Ferroelectric hysteresis loop, PUND, and pyroelectric current data support the speculation of the presence of ferroelectricity in an otherwise
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Tapas Ganguli for encouragement and support. The authors would also like to acknowledge the support of Anil Kumar IIT Indore for carrying out Raman measurements. P. Pokhriyal is thankful to Homi Bhabha National Institute, India, for providing research fellowship.
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