Quantum magnetism in minerals

Abstract

The discovery of magnetism by the ancient Greeks was enabled by the natural occurrence of lodestone -a magnetized version of the mineral magnetite. Nowadays, natural minerals continue to inspire the search for novel magnetic materials with quantum-critical behaviour or exotic ground states such as spin liquids. The recent surge of interest in magnetic frustration and quantum magnetism was largely encouraged by crystalline structures of natural minerals realizing pyrochlore, kagome, or triangular arrangements of magnetic ions. As a result, names like azurite, jarosite, volborthite, and others, which were barely known beyond the mineralogical community a few decades ago, found their way into cutting-edge research in solid-state physics. In some cases, the structures of natural minerals are too complex to be synthesized artificially in a chemistry lab, especially in single-crystalline form, and there is a growing number of examples demonstrating the potential of natural specimens for experimental investigations in the field of quantum magnetism. On many other occasions, minerals may guide chemists in the synthesis of novel compounds with unusual magnetic properties. The present review attempts to embrace this quickly emerging interdisciplinary field that bridges mineralogy with low-temperature condensed-matter physics and quantum chemistry. PACS: 75.30.-m -intrinsic properties of magnetically ordered materials; 75.10.Jm -models of magnetic ordering, including quantum spin frustration; 91.60.Pn -magnetic properties of minerals.

Synthesis, structure, and electronic properties of the Li11RbGd4Te6O30 single crystal

“…A Gd 3+ ion has 7 electrons, which just fully occupy the majority f orbitals and make the minority f orbitals totally empty (i.e. Gd 3+ has a high spin state and a spin (1) and Gd(2) in a Gd 2 O 15 dimer has the strongest exchange interaction, while the interactions between different dimmers are weaker. Therefore, we consider eight magnetic congurations in a primitive cell shown in Table 5.…”

“…Dimerized quantum spin systems are one of the simplest physical models in quantum mechanisms. 1 They are closely related to many phenomena associated with condensed matter physics. For example, the widely concerned quantum dimer magnet (QDM) is a quantum magnetism in which a pair of spins are entangled and form an S ¼ 0 singlet state.…”

High-throughput design of magnetic materials

“…It is noted that there are a big variety of magnetic materials which are with intriguing physics and promising for applications, as listed in the magnetism roadmap [15]. We excuse ourselves for leaving out the discussions on quantum magnets [16][17][18], quantum spin liquid [19], (curvilinear) nanomagnets [20,21], skyrmions [22], high entropy alloys [23], multiferroics [24], and ultrafast magnetism [25], which will be deferred to reviews specified. Also, we apologize for possible ignorance of specific publications due to the constraint on the man power.…”

Changes in CO2 Adsorption Affinity Related to Ni Doping in FeS Surfaces: A DFT-D3 Study

“…Transition metal sulphides constitute a group of naturally generated materials with arguably the most diverse electrical and magnetic properties available. They include materials with a variety of properties, including diamagnetic insulators (ZnS), diamagnetic semiconductors (PbS), antiferromagnetic semiconductors (CuFeS 2 ), ferrimagnetic (Fe 7 S 8 ) and antiferromagnetic metallic conductors (Fe 9 S 10 ), or Pauli paramagnetic metals ((Ni,Fe) 9 S 8 ), just to name a few [8][9][10]. Amongst those, iron sulphides constitute a distinct group of solids and complexes that play a key role in marine systems and global biogeochemical sulphur cycles, which are central to fundamental concepts about the evolution of the Earth surface environment [11].…”