Anisotropy, frustration and saddle point in the twisted Kagome antiferromagnet ErPdPb

TL;DR

This study synthesizes and characterizes ErPdPb, a twisted kagome antiferromagnet, revealing anisotropic magnetic behavior, frustration, and saddle point electronic features, advancing understanding of complex magnetic and electronic phenomena in frustrated lattices.

Contribution

It reports the synthesis and detailed magnetic, electronic, and thermal analysis of ErPdPb, highlighting its anisotropic properties, frustration effects, and saddle point electronic structure, which are novel in twisted kagome systems.

Findings

Antiferromagnetic order below 2.2 K

1/3 metamagnetic steps indicating Ising-like spins

Strong anisotropy and frustration in magnetic and transport properties

Abstract

The kagome lattice, with its inherent geometric frustration, provides a rich platform for exploring intriguing magnetic phenomena and topological electronic structures. In reduced-symmetry structures, such as twisted kagome systems involving rare earth elements, additional anisotropy can arise, enabling intriguing properties including spin-ice states, magnetocaloric effects, noncollinear magnetic ordering, and anomalous Hall effect. Here, we report the synthesis of single crystals of ErPdPb, which features a twisted kagome lattice net of Er atoms within the hexagonal ZrNiAl-type structure, and we investigate its magnetic, electronic, and thermal properties. The material exhibits antiferromagnetic ordering below 2.2 K, consistently observed in magnetic, transport, and heat capacity measurements. Magnetization measurements reveal 1/3 metamagnetic steps along the c-axis below the N\'eel temperature, suggesting an Ising-spin-like state on the twisted kagome lattice. A pronounced anisotropy between in-plane and out-of-plane resistivity is observed throughout the temperature range of 1.8-300 K, and the compound exhibits a significant frustration index of 13.6 (12.7) along the c-axis (ab-plane). Heat capacity measurements show a broad hump at 2.2 K, with an additional increase below 0.5 K. The anisotropic magnetic properties are further explored through density functional theory (DFT) calculations, which suggest strong easy-axis anisotropy, consistent with experimental magnetic measurements and crystal-field model expectations, and quasi-one-dimensional bands and a spin-split saddle point at the zone center.