Abstract
We report a study of the magnetic ground state and crystal electric field (CEF) scheme in the triangular-lattice antiferromagnet NdCd3P3. Combined neutron scattering, magnetization, and heat capacity measurements demonstrate that the Nd3+ moments occupying the triangular lattice in this material harbor hidden signs of frustration not detected in typical Curie-Weiss-based parametrization of the frustration index (f = ΘCW/TN). This is evidenced by a zero-field splitting of the Kramers' ground state and first excited state doublets at temperatures far in excess of TN as well as signatures of low-energy fluctuations for T ≫ TN. A suppression of the zero-field ordered moment relative to its field saturation value is observed, and the impacts of this magnetic frustration as well as the coexisting bond frustration in the CdP honeycomb network on the physical properties of NdCd3P3 are discussed.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 104414 |
| Journal | Physical Review Materials |
| Volume | 9 |
| Issue number | 10 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Oct 10 2025 |
Funding
This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering under Grant No. DE-SC0017752. J.R.C. acknowledges additional support through the NSF MPS-Ascend Postdoctoral Fellowship (Grant No. DMR-2137580). The work by A.S. is supported by the Quantum Science Center (QSC), a National Quantum Information Science Research Center of the U.S. Department of Energy. The MRL Shared Experimental Facilities are supported by the MRSEC Program of the NSF under Award No. DMR 2308708; a member of the NSF-funded Materials Research Facilities Network. This work used facilities supported via the UC Santa Barbara NSF Quantum Foundry, funded via the Q-AMASE-i program under Award No. DMR-1906325. A portion of the research used resources at the Spallation Neutron Source, a DOE Office of Science User Facility operated by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The beam time was allocated to the SEQUOIA spectrometer on Proposal No. IPTS-30819.1. This work is also based on experiments performed at the Swiss Spallation Neutron Source SINQ, Paul Scherrer Institute, Villigen, Switzerland.