Speaker
Description
Rare-earth molybdates offer an ideal platform for exploring frustrated magnetism arising from the interplay of crystal electric field effects, exchange interactions, and lattice geometry. We report a comprehensive structural, magnetic, and thermodynamic study of the insulating rare-earth molybdate Nd2MoO6. Powder x-ray diffraction confirms a tetragonal crystal structure featuring a bilayered Nd sublattice separated by MoO6 octahedral networks. Magnetic susceptibility and isothermal magnetization measurements reveal dominant paramagnetic behavior with strong low-temperature enhancement and no evidence of long-range magnetic ordering. Low-temperature heat-capacity measurements show no sharp anomaly down to the lowest measured temperatures. Instead, C_p/T exhibits a pronounced low-temperature upturn that is strongly suppressed by an applied magnetic field, indicating a magnetic origin. Analysis of C_p/T versus T^2 reveals a finite T→0 intercept, consistent with persistent low-energy magnetic excitations. The extracted magnetic entropy is strongly suppressed relative to the free-ion value for Nd3+, pointing to a highly frustrated or dynamically fluctuating magnetic ground state.
| Academic or Professional Status | Graduate Student |
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