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Local structural distortion and interrelated phonon mode studies in yttrium chromite

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Abstract

YCrO3 (YCO) perovskite has been originally reported to be a biferroic with antiferromagnetic and ferroelectric (FE) properties, in which the origin of FE in YCO remains ambiguous. However, further studies reveal the presence of a global orthorhombic Pnma structure with a local structural heterogeneity. In this study, we discuss the high temperature phonon modes and their inter-relation to local structural distortions in YCO perovskite through Raman spectroscopy experiments and density functional theory (DFT) calculations. We observe that the Raman active B3g(3) out of phase scissor mode (SM) disappears above the dielectric transition temperature (Tc) commensurate with the local structural distortions. DFT calculations show that the transformation of a room temperature Y-cation distorted orthorhombic structure to a perfect orthorhombic structure above the dielectric transition temperature in which the Y cation is undisplaced could lead to the conversion of SM with symmetry B3g to Raman inactive B1u mode.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Authors V.M. and R.R. would like to acknowledge MHRD, Govt of India and DST No. SERB/F/5142/2013-14/ for financial support to carry out the research. We also thank S. Gascoin for her help in XRD measurements. Partial support from LAFICS and CNRS is also acknowledged. We thank Asst. Prof. P. Padhan and Prof. J. Kreisel for helpful discussions. RRN thanks DST for financial support and computational facilities under TUE-CMS, J.C. Bose fellowship under the grant DST691 for the financial support, Prof. S. Ramasesha for the computing facilities and Dr. Anusooya Pati and Dr. Diptikanta swain for useful discussions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Materials Science and Metallurgical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad, Hyderabad, Telangana, 502205, India

    Venkateswara Rao Mannepalli & Ranjith Ramadurai

  2. Solid State and Structural Chemistry Unit, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, 560012, India

    Rajamani Raghunathan

  3. Laboratoire CRISMAT, ENSICAEN/CNRS, Caen, 14050, France

    Adrian David & Wilfrid Prellier

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  1. Venkateswara Rao Mannepalli
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  2. Rajamani Raghunathan
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  3. Ranjith Ramadurai
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Correspondence to Ranjith Ramadurai.

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Mannepalli, V.R., Raghunathan, R., Ramadurai, R. et al. Local structural distortion and interrelated phonon mode studies in yttrium chromite. Journal of Materials Research 32, 1541–1547 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1557/jmr.2017.5

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