Eur. Phys. J. B (2013) 86: 247
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2013-40028-1

Regular Article

Frustration induced disordered magnetism in Ba₃RuTi₂O₉

Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Powai, 400076 Mumbai, India

^a e-mail: tusdey@gmail.com

Received: 13 January 2013
Received in final form: 19 February 2013
Published online: 3 June 2013

Abstract

The title compound Ba₃RuTi₂O₉ crystallizes with a hexagonal unit cell. It contains layers of edge shared triangular network of Ru⁴⁺(S = 1) ions. Magnetic susceptibility χ(T) and heat capacity data show no long range magnetic ordering down to 1.8 K. A Curie-Weiss (CW) fitting of χ(T) yields a large antiferromagnetic CW temperature θ_CW =  −166 K. However, in low field, a splitting of zero field cooled (ZFC) and field cooled (FC) χ(T) is observed below  ∼30 K. Our measurements suggest that Ba₃RuTi₂O₉ is a highly frustrated system but only a small fraction of the spins in this system undergoes a transition to a frozen magnetic state below  ∼ 30 K.