Chemistry and Physics Faculty Articles

Title

Field-Induced Spin-Flop in Antiferromagnetic Semiconductors with Commensurate and Incommensurate Magnetic Structures: Li2FeGeS4 (LIGS) and Li2FeSnS4 (LITS)

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

11-14-2014

Publication Title

Inorganic Chemistry

ISSN

0020-1669

Volume

53

Issue/No.

23

First Page

12265

Last Page

12274

Abstract

Li2FeGeS4 (LIGS) and Li2FeSnS4 (LITS), which are among the first magnetic semiconductors with the wurtz-kesterite structure, exhibit antiferromagnetism with TN ≈ 6 and 4 K, respectively. Both compounds undergo a conventional metamagnetic transition that is accompanied by a hysteresis; a reversible spin-flop transition is dominant. On the basis of constant-wavelength neutron powder diffraction data, we propose that LIGS and LITS exhibit collinear magnetic structures that are commensurate and incommensurate with propagation vectors km = [1/2, 1/2, 1/2] and [0, 0, 0.546(1)], respectively. The two compounds exhibit similar magnetic phase diagrams, as the critical fields are temperature-dependent. The nuclear structures of the bulk powder samples were verified using time-of-flight neutron powder diffraction along with synchrotron X-ray powder diffraction. 57Fe and 119Sn Mössbauer spectroscopy confirmed the presence of Fe2+ and Sn4+ as well as the number of crystallographically unique positions. LIGS and LITS are semiconductors with indirect and direct bandgaps of 1.42 and 1.86 eV, respectively, according to optical diffuse-reflectance UV–vis–NIR spectroscopy.

ORCID ID

0000-0001-7825-8667

DOI

10.1021/ic5011693

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