Abstract
The van der Waals layered magnet α-RuCl3 offers tantalizing prospects for the realization of Majorana quasiparticles. Efforts to understand this are, however, hampered by inconsistent magnetic and thermal transport properties likely coming from the formation of structural disorder during crystal growth, postgrowth processing, or upon cooling through the first order structural transition. Here, we investigate structural disorder in α-RuCl3 using x-ray diffuse scattering and three-dimensional difference pair distribution function analysis. We develop a quantitative model that describes disorder in α-RuCl3 in terms of rotational twinning and intermixing of the high- and low-temperature structural layer stacking. This disorder may be important to consider when investigating the detailed magnetic and electronic properties of this widely studied material.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 144419 |
| Journal | Physical Review B |
| Volume | 108 |
| Issue number | 14 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Oct 1 2023 |
Funding
Work at Brookhaven is supported by the Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Materials Sciences and Engineering Division, U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) under Contract No. DE-SC0012704. Work at Argonne National Laboratory (M.J.K., R.O., and S.R.; single crystal diffuse scattering measurements and data reduction) was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences, Materials Sciences and Engineering Division. Work at Oak Ridge National Laboratory was sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences, Materials Sciences and Engineering Division. This research used resources of the Advanced Photon Source, a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facility operated for the DOE Office of Science by Argonne National Laboratory under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357. Crystal synthesis work by J.Q.Y. was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, National Quantum Information Science Research Centers, Quantum Science Center. Crystal structures were plotted using vesta .