Observation of Vacancies, Faults, and Superstructures in Ln5Mo2O12 (Ln = La, Y, and Lu) Compounds with Direct Mo-Mo Bonding

Diane M. Colabello, Elizabeth M. Sobalvarro, John P. Sheckelton, Joerg C. Neuefeind, Tyrel M. McQueen, Peter G. Khalifah

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

4 Scopus citations

Abstract

Among oxide compounds with direct metal-metal bonding, the Y5Mo2O12 (A5B2O12) structural family of compounds has a particularly intriguing low-dimensional structure due to the presence of bioctahedral B2O10 dimers arranged in one-dimensional edge-sharing chains along the direction of the metal-metal bonds. Furthermore, these compounds can have a local magnetic moment due to the noninteger oxidation state (+4.5) of the transition metal, in contrast to the conspicuous lack of a local moment that is commonly observed when oxide compounds with direct metal-metal bonding have integer oxidation states resulting from the lifting of orbital degeneracy typically induced by the metal-metal bonding. Although a monoclinic C2/m structure has been previously proposed for Ln5Mo2O12 (Ln = La-Lu and Y) members of this family based on prior single crystal diffraction data, it is found that this structural model misses many important structural features. On the basis of synchrotron powder diffraction data, it is shown that the C2/m monoclinic unit cell represents a superstructure relative to a previously unrecognized orthorhombic Immm subcell and that the superstructure derives from the ordering of interchangeable Mo2O10 and LaO6 building blocks. The superstructure for this reason is typically highly faulted, as evidenced by the increased breadth of superstructure diffraction peaks associated with a coherence length of 1-2 nm in the c∗ direction. Finally, it is shown that oxygen vacancies can occur when Ln = La, producing an oxygen deficient stoichiometry of La5Mo2O11.55 and an approximately 10-fold reduction in the number of unpaired electrons due to the reduction of the average Mo valence from +4.5 to +4.05, a result confirmed by magnetic susceptibility measurements. This represents the first observation of oxygen vacancies in this family of compounds and provides an important means of continuously tuning the magnetic interactions within the one-dimensional octahedral chains of this system.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)12866-12880
Number of pages15
JournalInorganic Chemistry
Volume56
Issue number21
DOIs
StatePublished - Nov 6 2017
Externally publishedYes

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation Grant DMR-0955646. Work by J.P.S. and T.M. was supported by the US Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering under Award DE-FG-02-08ER46544 to the Institute for Quantum Matter at JHU. This material is based upon work supported by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Scientific User Facilities Division, at the Spallation Neutron Source under Contract DE-AC05-00OR22725. This research used resources of the Advanced Photon Source, a US Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facility operated for the DOE Office of Science by Argonne National Laboratory under Contract DE-AC02-06CH11357. Research was carried out in part at the Center for Functional Nanomaterials, Brookhaven National Laboratory, which is supported by the US Department of Energy, Office of basic Energy Sciences, under Contract DE-SC0012704.

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