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Ground state in proximity to a possible Kitaev spin liquid: The undistorted honeycomb iridate NaxIrO3 (0.60≤x≤0.80)

Hengdi Zhao1, Bing Hu1,2, Feng Ye3, Minhyea Lee1, Pedro Schlottmann4, and Gang Cao1,*

  • 1Department of Physics, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA
  • 2School of Mathematics and Physics, North China Electric Power University, Beijing 102206, China
  • 3Neutron Scattering Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37831, USA
  • 4Department of Physics, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida 32306, USA

  • *gang.cao@colorado.edu

Phys. Rev. B 104, L041108 – Published 20 July, 2021

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.104.L041108

Abstract

We report the results of our study of a recently synthesized honeycomb iridate NaxIrO3 (0.60≤x≤0.80). Single-crystal NaxIrO3 adopts a honeycomb lattice noticeably without distortions and stacking disorder inherently existent in its sister compound Na2IrO3. The oxidation state of the Ir ion is a mixed valence state resulting from a majority Ir5+(5d4) ion and a minority Ir6+(5d3) ion. NaxIrO3 is a Mott insulator likely with a predominant pseudospin =1 state. It exhibits an effective moment of 1.1μB/Ir and a Curie-Weiss temperature of −19 K but with no discernible long-range order above 1 K. The physical behavior below 1 K features two prominent anomalies at Th=0.9K and Tl=0.12K in both the heat capacity and AC magnetic susceptibility. Intermediate between Th and Tl lies a pronounced temperature linearity of the heat capacity with a large slope of 77mJ/moleK2, a feature expected for highly correlated metals but not at all for insulators. These results along with a comparison drawn with the honeycomb lattices Na2IrO3 and (Na0.2Li0.8)2IrO3 point to an exotic ground state in proximity to a possible Kitaev spin liquid.

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