Electronic structure of the hole-doped delafossite oxides CuCr1−xMgxO2

Abstract

We report the detailed electronic structure of a hole-doped delafossite oxide CuCr${}_{1\ensuremath{-}x}$Mg${}_{x}$O${}_{2}$ ($0\ensuremath{\le}x\ensuremath{\le}0.03$) studied by photoemission spectroscopy (PES), soft x-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS), and band-structure calculations within the local-density approximation $+U$ ($\mathrm{LDA}+U$) scheme. Cr/Cu 3$p$-$3d$ resonant PES reveals that the near-Fermi-level leading structure has primarily the Cr $3d$ character with a minor contribution from the Cu $3d$ through Cu $3d\ensuremath{-}$O $2p\ensuremath{-}$Cr $3d$ hybridization, having good agreement with the band-structure calculations. This indicates that a doped hole will have primarily the Cr $3d$ character. Cr $2p$ PES and $L$-edge XAS spectra exhibit typical Cr${}^{3+}$ features for all $x$, while the Cu $L$-edge XAS spectra exhibited a systematic change with $x$. This indicates now that the Cu valence is monovalent at $x=0$ and the doped hole should have Cu $3d$ character. Nevertheless, we surprisingly observed two types of charge-transfer satellites that should be attributed to Cu${}^{+}$ ($3{d}^{10}$) and Cu${}^{2+}$ ($3{d}^{9}$) like initial states in Cu $2p$-$3d$ resonant PES spectrum of at $x=0$, while Cu $2p$ PES spectra with no doubt shows the Cu${}^{+}$ character even for the lightly doped samples. We propose that these contradictory results can be understood by introducing not only the Cu $4s$ state, but also finite Cu $3d,4s\ensuremath{-}$Cr $3d$ charge transfer via O $2p$ states in the ground-state electronic configuration.