Abstract
Functional materials design normally focuses on structurally ordered systems because disorder is considered detrimental to many functional properties. Here we challenge this paradigm by showing that particular types of strongly correlated disorder can give rise to useful characteristics that are inaccessible to ordered states. A judicious combination of low-symmetry building unit and high-symmetry topological template leads to aperiodic ‘procrystalline' solids that harbour this type of disorder. We identify key classes of procrystalline states together with their characteristic diffraction behaviour, and establish mappings onto known and target materials. The strongly correlated disorder found in these systems is associated with specific sets of modulation periodicities distributed throughout the Brillouin zone. Lattice dynamical calculations reveal selective disorder-driven phonon broadening that resembles the poorly understood ‘waterfall' effect observed in relaxor ferroelectrics. This property of procrystalline solids suggests a mechanism by which strongly correlated topological disorder might allow independently optimized thermal and electronic transport behaviour, such as required for high-performance thermoelectrics.
Highlights
Functional materials design normally focuses on structurally ordered systems because disorder is considered detrimental to many functional properties
An idea we will come to develop is that this propensity a b c d for disorder is encoded in the combination of the symmetry of the water molecule and the lattice on which the water molecules are arranged
The question of O/N ordering within square grid layers of transition-metal oxynitrides presents a related problem, which maps onto the square ice model following geometry inversion from one site to the (Fig. 1c)[14]
Summary
Functional materials design normally focuses on structurally ordered systems because disorder is considered detrimental to many functional properties. The importance of structure in determining the physical properties of solids is what gives sense to the approach of developing new types of functional materials through informed design of constituent building blocks. We proceed to establish a link between the geometry of structural building blocks and the propensity for specific types of strongly correlated disorder in the resulting material assembly This is the design element of our approach. Our paper concludes by demonstrating how the correlated disorder deliberately engineered within one representative affects its lattice dynamics in a highly specific manner This is the functional element of our approach because the effect we observe suggests, for example, a fundamentally new way of optimizing thermoelectric response
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