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Spin chirality on a two-dimensional frustrated lattice

Nature Materials volume 4, pages 323–328 (2005)Cite this article

Abstract

The collective behaviour of interacting magnetic moments can be strongly influenced by the topology of the underlying lattice. In geometrically frustrated spin systems, interesting chiral correlations may develop that are related to the spin arrangement on triangular plaquettes. We report a study of the spin chirality on a two-dimensional geometrically frustrated lattice. Our new chemical synthesis methods allow us to produce large single-crystal samples of KFe3(OH)6(SO4)2, an ideal Kagomé lattice antiferromagnet. Combined thermodynamic and neutron scattering measurements reveal that the phase transition to the ordered ground-state is unusual. At low temperatures, application of a magnetic field induces a transition between states with different non-trivial spin-textures.

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Figure 1: The Kagomé lattice with spins arranged in two different configurations.
Figure 2: Magnetization and specific heat measurements of KFe3(OH)6(SO4)2.
Figure 3: Measurements of the field-induced transition to a state with non-zero scalar chirality.
Figure 4: Inelastic neutron scattering data for KFe3(OH)6(SO4)2 measured above TN, along with structure factor calculations.

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Acknowledgements

We thank A. Clearfield for providing the large hydrothermal vessels used in the crystal growth. We thank Y.-B. Kim, T. Senthil and T. Yildirim for useful discussions. This work was supported in part by the MRSEC Program of the National Science Foundation under award number DMR 02-13282 and also by NSF award DMR-0239377.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, 02139, Massachusetts, USA

    Daniel Grohol & Daniel G. Nocera

  2. Department of Physics and Center for Materials Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, 02139, Massachusetts, USA

    Kittiwit Matan, Jin-Hyung Cho & Young S. Lee

  3. NIST Center for Neutron Research, Gaithersburg, 20899, Maryland, USA

    Seung-Hun Lee & Jeffrey W. Lynn

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  1. Daniel Grohol
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Correspondence to Young S. Lee.

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Grohol, D., Matan, K., Cho, JH. et al. Spin chirality on a two-dimensional frustrated lattice. Nature Mater 4, 323–328 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat1353

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