Most
materials in Nature expand when heated, and very limited materials
show the opposite behavior, i.e., negative thermal expansion (NTE).
Here, we observed that NTE is associated with the rarely occurring
Fano antiresonance in Raman spectroscopy and investigated the role
of electron–phonon coupling on the negative thermal expansion
observed in the multiferroic ErFeO3 perovskite; for this
purpose, the temperature-dependent synchrotron-based X-ray diffraction
and Raman scattering experiments were carried out in the temperature
range 80–300 K. The occurrence of NTE was also confirmed via
the strain gauge measurement technique. A one-to-one correlation between
strong electron–phonon coupling, as reflected in the Fano antiresonance
in Raman spectra, with q ≈ 0, and the geometrical
rotation of the Fe–O–Fe bond angle that has been observed.
It has been demonstrated that the NTE is controlled by the strong
temperature dependence of electron–phonon coupling in the
prepared ErFeO3 sample. The present report may provide
a new strategy for manipulating NTE behaviors by tuning the electron–phonon
coupling.