No Arabic abstract
Magnetic properties of Li$_x$CoO$_2$ for $x = 0.94, 0.75, 0.66$ and $0.51$ were investigated in frames of method combining Generalized Gradient Approximation with Dynamical Mean--Field Theory (GGA+DMFT). We found that a delicate interplay between Hunds exchange energy and $t_{2g}-e_g$ crystal field splitting is responsible for the high spin to low spin state transition for Co$^{4+}$ ions. The GGA+DMFT calculations show that at small doping level the Co$^{4+}$ ions adopt high spin state, while delithiation results in increase of the crystal field splitting and low spin state becomes preferable. The Co$^{3+}$ ions were found to stays in the low spin configuration for any $x$.
The ground states of Na$_x$CoO$_2$ ($0.0<x<1.0$) is studied by the LDA+Gutzwiller approach, where charge transfer and orbital fluctuations are all self-consistently treated {it ab-initio}. In contrast to previous studies, which are parameter-dependent, we characterized the phase diagram as: (1) Stoner magnetic metal for $x>0.6$ due to $a_{1g}$ van-Hove singularity near band top; (2) correlated non-magnetic metal without $e_g^{prime}$ pockets for $0.3<x<0.6$; (3) $e_g^{prime}$ pockets appear for $x<0.3$, and additional magnetic instability involves. Experimental quasi-particle properties is well explained, and the $a_{1g}$-$e_g^{prime}$ anti-crossing is attributed to spin-orbital coupling.
We present a study of the structure, the electric resistivity, the magnetic susceptibility, and the thermal expansion of La$_{1-x}$Eu$_x$CoO$_3$. LaCoO$_3$ shows a temperature-induced spin-state transition around 100 K and a metal-insulator transition around 500 K. Partial substitution of La$^{3+}$ by the smaller Eu$^{3+}$ causes chemical pressure and leads to a drastic increase of the spin gap from about 190 K in LaCoO$_3$ to about 2000 K in EuCoO$_3$, so that the spin-state transition is shifted to much higher temperatures. A combined analysis of thermal expansion and susceptibility gives evidence that the spin-state transition has to be attributed to a population of an intermediate-spin state with orbital order for $x<0.5$ and without orbital order for larger $x$. In contrast to the spin-state transition, the metal-insulator transition is shifted only moderately to higher temperatures with increasing Eu content, showing that the metal-insulator transition occurs independently from the spin-state distribution of the Co$^{3+}$ ions. Around the metal-insulator transition the magnetic susceptibility shows a similar increase for all $x$ and approaches a doping-independent value around 1000 K indicating that well above the metal-insulator transition the same spin state is approached for all $x$.
Cd$_3$As$_2$ is one of the prototypical topological Dirac semimetals. Here, we manipulate the band inversion responsible for the emergence of Dirac nodes by alloying Cd$_3$As$_2$ with topologically trivial Zn$_3$As$_2$. We observe the expected topological phase transition around a Zn concentration of $xsim 1$ while the carrier density monotonically decreases as $x$ is increased. For larger $x$, the thermoelectric figure of merit exhibits comparably large values exceeding 0.3 at room temperature, due to the combined effects of a strong enhancement of the thermopower, an only moderate increase of the resistivity, and a suppression of the thermal conductivity. Complementary quantum-oscillation data and optical-conductivity measurements allow to infer that the enhanced thermoelectric performance is due to a flattening of the band structure in the higher-$x$ region in Cd$_{3-x}$Zn$_x$As$_2$.
Weyl fermions as emergent quasiparticles can arise in Weyl semimetals (WSMs) in which the energy bands are nondegenerate, resulting from inversion or time-reversal symmetry breaking. Nevertheless, experimental evidence for magnetically induced WSMs is scarce. Here, using photoemission spectroscopy, we observe that the degeneracy of Bloch bands is already lifted in the paramagnetic phase of EuCd$_2$As$_2$. We attribute this effect to the itinerant electrons experiencing quasistatic and quasi-long-range ferromagnetic fluctuations. Moreover, the spin nondegenerate band structure harbors a pair of ideal Weyl nodes near the Fermi level. Hence, we show that long-range magnetic order and the spontaneous breaking of time-reversal symmetry are not an essential requirement for WSM states in centrosymmetric systems, and that WSM states can emerge in a wider range of condensed-matter systems than previously thought.
A series of 122 phase BaFe$_{2-x}$Ni$_x$As$_2$ ($x$ = 0, 0.055, 0.096, 0.18, 0.23) single crystals were grown by self flux method and a dome-like Ni doping dependence of superconducting transition temperature is discovered. The transition temperature $T_c^{on}$ reaches a maximum of 20.5 K at $x$ = 0.096, and it drops to below 4 K as $x$ $geq$ 0.23. The negative thermopower in the normal state indicates that electron-like charge carrier indeed dominates in this system. This Ni-doped system provides another example of superconductivity induced by electron doping in the 122 phase.