Elastic-frustration-driven unusual magnetoelastic properties in a switchable core-shell spin-crossover nanostructure
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Date
2021
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Université de M'sila
Abstract
Spin-crossover (SCO) solids have been studied for their fascinating properties, exhibiting first-order phase
transitions and macroscopic bistabilities, accompanied by significant magnetic, structural, and optical changes.
These exceptional propertiesmake these materials promising for applications as high-density information storage
and optical switches. Recently, the critical progress made in chemistry allowed the design of spin-crossover
nanocomposites, combining the properties of two types of spin-crossover solids having different properties, like
different lattice parameters, bulk moduli, transition temperatures, ligand fields, etc. In this paper, we consider a
microscopic electroelastic description of a SCO nanostructure made of a SCO active core surrounded by a SCO
active shell, for which we impose an unconventional elastic frustration at the core-shell interface. The detailed
examination of the thermodynamic properties of such a nanocomposite, as a function of the lattice parameter
misfit between the two constituents, revealed that the frustration causes unexpected behaviors on the thermal
dependence of the average bond lengths, such as the emergence of two- or three-step spin transitions, with
self-organization of the spin states in the plateau regions. These results highlight the nontrivial character of the
magnetoelastic properties in switchable SCO nanoparticles.