Publications
One publication
Physical Review Letters 118 077201 (2017)
Bulk rutile RuO2 has long been considered a Pauli paramagnet. Here we report that RuO2 exhibits a hitherto undetected lattice distortion below approximately 900K. The distortion is accompanied by antiferromagnetic order up to at least 300 K with a small room temperature magnetic moment of approximately 0.05μB as evidenced by polarized neutron diffraction. Density functional theory plus U (DFT+U) calculations indicate that antiferromagnetism is favored even for small values of the Hubbard
U of the order of 1eV. The antiferromagnetism may be traced to a Fermi surface instability, lifting the band degeneracy imposed by the rutile crystal field. The combination of high Néel temperature and small itinerant moments make RuO2 unique among ruthenate compounds and among oxide materials in general.
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