No Arabic abstract
We theoretically study hydrogen-bonded molecular conductors synthesized recently, $kappa$-H$_3$(Cat-EDT-TTF)$_2$ and its diselena analog, $kappa$-H$_3$(Cat-EDT-ST)$_2$, by first-principles density-functional theory calculations. In these crystals, two H(Cat-EDT-TTF/ST) units share a hydrogen atom with a short O--H--O hydrogen bond. The calculated band structure near the Fermi level shows a quasi-two-dimensional character, with a rather large interlayer dispersion due to the absence of insulating layers in contrast with conventional molecular conductors. We discuss effective low-energy models based on H(Cat-EDT-TTF/ST) units and its dimers, respectively, where the microscopic character of the orbitals composing them are analyzed. Furthermore, we find a stable structure which is different from the experimentally determined structure, where the shared hydrogen atom becomes localized to one of the oxygen atoms, in which charge disproportionation between the two types of H(Cat-EDT-TTF) units is associated. The calculated potential energy surface for the H atom is very shallow near the minimum points, therefore the probability of the H atom can be delocalized between the two O atoms.
We study the electronic and structural properties of the low-temperature ordered phase of hydrogen-bonded molecular conductors, $kappa$-D$_3$(Cat-EDT-TTF)$_2$ and its selenium-substituted analog $kappa$-D$_3$(Cat-EDT-ST)$_2$, by means of first-principles density functional theory~(DFT) calculations. In these compounds, the charge ordering in the $pi$-electron system is coupled with the ordering of the displacements in the deuteriums forming the hydrogen-bond, equally shared by two oxygens in the high-temperature phase. While the structural optimization within the standard DFT method based on the generalized gradient approximation fails to reproduce the structural stability of the charge-ordered (CO) phase, we show that a hybrid functional of Heyd, Scuseria, and Ernzerhof can reproduce structural characters of the CO phase, owing to the more localized nature of the wave functions. Furthermore, using the ability of the hybrid functional to predict the electronic and structural properties, we find a stable noncentrosymmetric CO phase with another pattern of deuterium ordering.
To verify the effect of geometrical frustration, we artificially distort the triangular lattice of quasi-two-dimensional organic conductor $kappa$-(BEDT-TTF)$_2$Cu$_2$(CN)$_3$ [BEDT-TTF: bis(ethylenedithio)terathiofulvalene] by analogous-molecular substitution and apply $^{13}$C NMR of bulk and substituted sites, electric conductivity, and static magnetic susceptibility measurements. The results indicate that the magnetic characteristics of the substituted sample are quantitatively similar to those of the pure sample. Moreover the magnetic characteristics at the substituted sites are also the same as in the bulk. These results suggest that the observed magnetic properties may not be due to the geometrical frustration but the importance of disorder.
We employed first-principles density-functional theory (DFT) calculations to characterize Dirac electrons in quasi-two-dimensional molecular conductor $alpha$-(BETS)$_2$I$_3$ [= $alpha$-(BEDT-TSeF)$_2$I$_3$] at a low temperature of 30K. We provide a tight-binding model with intermolecular transfer energies evaluated from maximally localized Wannier functions, where the number of relevant transfer integrals is relatively large due to the delocalized character of Se $p$ orbitals. The spin-orbit coupling gives rise to an exotic insulating state with an indirect band gap of about 2 meV. We analyzed the energy spectrum with a Dirac cone close to the Fermi level to develop an effective Hamiltonian with site-potentials, which reproduces the spectrum obtained by the DFT band structure.
The organic charge-transfer salt $kappa$-(BEDT-TTF)$_{2}$Hg(SCN)$_{2}$Br is a quasi two-dimensional metal with a half-filled conduction band at ambient conditions. When cooled below $T=80$ K it undergoes a pronounced transition to an insulating phase where the resistivity increases many orders of magnitude. In order to elucidate the nature of this metal-insulator transition we have performed comprehensive transport, dielectric and optical investigations. The findings are compared with other dimerized $kappa$-(BEDT-TTF) salts, in particular the Cl-analogue, where a charge-order transition takes place at $T_{rm CO}=30$ K.
We present high-resolution measurements of the relative length change as a function of temperature of the organic charge-transfer salt $kappa$-(BEDT-TTF)$_2$Hg(SCN)$_2$Cl. We identify anomalous features at $T_g approx,63$ K which can be assigned to a kinetic glass-like ordering transition. By determining the activation energy $E_A$, this glass-like transition can be related to conformational degrees of freedom of the ethylene endgroups of the organic building block BEDT-TTF. As opposed to other $kappa$-(BEDT-TTF)$_2X$ salts, we identify a peculiar ethylene endgroup ordering in the present material in which only one of the two crystallographically inequivalent ethylene endgroups is subject to glass-like ordering. This experimental finding is fully consistent with our predictions from $ab,initio$ calculations from which we estimate the energy differences $Delta E$ and the activation energies $E_A$ between different conformations. The present results indicate that the specific interaction between the ethylene endgroups and the nearby anion layers leads to different energetics of the inequivalent ethylene endgroups, as evidenced by different ratios $E_A/Delta E$. We infer that the ratio $E_A/Delta E$ is a suitable parameter to identify the tendency of ethylene endgroups towards glass-like freezing.