Eur. Phys. J. B (2012) 85: 4
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2011-20660-5

Regular Article

Magnetic behaviour of doped dimer compounds Sr₃Cr_2−xM_xO₈ (M = V, Mn)

Department of Solid State Physics, Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, 2A & B Raja S. C. Mullick Road, 700 032 Kolkata, India

^a e-mail: sspsm2@iacs.res.in

Received: 12 August 2011
Received in final form: 28 October 2011
Published online: 11 January 2012

Abstract

We report the effect of substitution of Cr by V and Mn in the spin- dimer compound Sr₃Cr₂O₈. In the pentavalent Cr site, V ion has zero effective moment, while Mn remains in the spin-1 state. For both V and Mn substitutions, the gap in the spin excitation spectra remains almost unchanged in the dilute doping regime. The low temperature Curie tail, expected to be originated from free or quasi-free magnetic ions, is found to be larger in case of V doped samples. However, inter-dimer interaction is found to be stronger in the Mn doped samples. The underlying magnetic behaviour of these doped samples is presumably related to the effect of broken dimers due to random substitutions.