Suppression of the commensurate spin-Peierls state in Sc-doped TiOCl

Abstract

We have performed x-ray scattering measurements on single crystals of the doped spin-Peierls compound Ti(1-x)Sc(x)OCl (x = 0, 0.01, 0.03). These measurements reveal that the presence of non-magnetic dopants has a profound effect on the unconventional spin-Peierls behavior of this system, even at concentrations as low as 1%. Sc-doping suppresses commensurate fluctuations in the pseudogap and incommensurate spin-Peierls phases of TiOCl, and prevents the formation of a long-range ordered spin-Peierls state. Broad incommensurate scattering develops in the doped compounds near Tc2 ~ 93 K, and persists down to base temperature (~ 7 K) with no evidence of a lock-in transition. The width of the incommensurate dimerization peaks indicates short correlation lengths on the order of ~ 12 angstroms below Tc2. The intensity of the incommensurate scattering is significantly reduced at higher Sc concentrations, indicating that the size of the associated lattice displacement decreases rapidly as a function of doping.

7 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (3)

• Heat capacity of the quantum magnet TiOCl
• X-ray Scattering Study of the spin-Peierls transition and soft phonon behavior in TiOCl
• Neutron and X-ray Scattering Studies of the Lightly-Doped Spin-Peierls System Cu(1-x)Cd(x)GeO3

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Charge density wave order and fluctuations above T${}_{CDW}$ and below superconducting T${}_c$ in the kagome metal CsV${}_3$Sb${}_5$
• Singlet-Triplet Excitations in the Unconventional Spin-Peierls System TiOBr
• Critical properties of the unconventional spin-Peierls system TiOBr
• Absence of static magnetic order in lightly-doped Ti1-xScxOCl down to 1.7 K
• Co-existing Singlet and Ordered S=1/2 Moments in the Ground State of the Triclinic Quantum Magnet CuMoO4