Electric, Dielectric, and Phonon Properties of Cu2OCl2

Abstract

Investigating the multiferroic properties of , their temperature and magnetic‐field dependencies around the magnetic and ferroelectric phase transition temperatures and are analyzed using a microscopic model and Green's function technique. Near the Neel temperature , a kink in the specific heat and also in the phonon energy and damping due to strong anharmonic spin–phonon interaction is observed. The kink in disappears with increasing magnetic field h. The polarization shows also a small anomaly at and decreases with increasing magnetic field h. This behavior strongly suggests that exhibits multiferroic characteristics. A kink at can be seen in the real part of the dielectric constant , too. It should be noted that demonstrates a significant increase with increasing field strength h below , which is a pronounced magneto‐dielectric effect. These findings qualitatively agree with the experimental data.