Slater Insulator in Iridate Perovskites with Strong Spin-Orbit Coupling

Abstract

The perovskite SrIrO3 is an exotic narrow-band metal owing to a confluence of the strengths of the spin-orbit coupling (SOC) and the electron-electron correlations. It has been proposed that topological and magnetic insulating phases can be achieved by tuning the SOC, Hubbard interactions, and/or lattice symmetry. Here, we report that the substitution of nonmagnetic, isovalent Sn4+ for Ir4+ in the SrIr1-xSnxO3 perovskites synthesized under high pressure leads to a metal-insulator transition to an antiferromagnetic (AF) phase at TN > 225 K. The continuous change of the cell volume as detected by x-ray diffraction and the lamda-shape transition of the specific heat on cooling through TN demonstrate that the metal-insulator transition is of second-order. Neutron powder diffraction results indicate that the Sn substitution enlarges an octahedral-site distortion that reduces the SOC relative to the spin-spin exchange interaction and results in the type-G AF spin ordering below TN. Measurement of high-temperature magnetic susceptibility shows the evolution of magnetic coupling in the paramagnetic phase typical of weak itinerant-electron magnetism in the Sn-substituted samples. A reduced structural symmetry in the magnetically ordered phase leads to an electron gap opening at the Brillouin zone boundary below TN in the same way as proposed by Slater.

15 pages, 4 figures

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Cited by in corpus (17)

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• Magnetism out of disorder in a J=0 compound Ba2YIrO6
• Novel spin-orbit coupling driven emergent states in iridate-based heterostructures
• Mott phase in a van der Waals transition-metal halide at single layer limit
• Correlated Quantum Phenomena of Spin-Orbit Coupled Perovskite Oxide Heterostructures: Cases of SrRuO3 and SrIrO3-Based Artificial Superlattices
• Variational cluster approach to thermodynamic properties of interacting fermions at finite temperatures: A case study of the two-dimensional single-band Hubbard model at half filling
• Spin-gap and two-dimensional magnetic excitations in Sr2IrO4
• Low temperature ferromagnetism in perovskite SrIrO${}_3$ films
• Interface induced exchange bias effect in La${}_{0.67}$Sr${}_{0.33}$MnO${}_3$/SrIrO${}_3$ multilayer
• Strain-dependent Insulating State and Kondo Effect in Epitaxial SrIrO${}_3$ Films
• Large asymmetric anomalous Nernst effect in the antiferromagnet SrIr${}_{0.8}$Sn${}_{0.2}$O${}_3$
• Possible superconductivity induced by a large spin-orbit coupling in carrier doped iridium oxide insulators: A weak coupling approach
• Mott Gap Softening Coinciding with Spin Correlations Collapse in a-RuCl3
• Epitaxial growth and antiferromagnetism of Sn-substituted perovskite iridate SrIr${}_{0.8}$Sn${}_{0.2}$O${}_3$
• Spin and charge order in doped spin-orbit coupled Mott insulators
• Anomalous Fermi pockets on Hund's metal surface of Sr2RuO4 induced by the correlation-enhanced spin-orbit coupling
• Coexistence of insulator-like paramagnon and metallic spin-orbit exciton modes in SrIrO${}_3$