Hole and Electron Doping of the 4d Transition-Metal Oxyhydride LaSr3 NiRuO4 H4.

Abstract

Hole or electron doping of phases prepared by topochemical reactions (e.g. anion deintercalation or anion-exchange) is extremely challenging as these low-temperature conversion reactions are typically very sensitive to the electron counts of precursor phases. Herein we report the successful hole and electron doping of the transition-metal oxyhydride LaSr3 NiRuO4 H4 by first preparing precursors in the range Lax Sr4-x NiRuO8 0.5<x<1.4 and then converting into the corresponding Lax Sr4-x NiRuO4 H4 phases. This is particularly noteworthy as the (Ni/Ru)H2 sheets in the Lax Sr4-x NiRuO4 H4 phases are structurally analogous to the CuO2 sheets in cuprate superconductors and hole doping (Ni1+/2+ , Ru2+ ) or electron doping (Ni2+ , Ru1+/2+ ) yields materials with partial occupancy in Ni/Ru -H 1s bands which are analogous to the partially occupied Cu -O 2p bands present in the CuO2 sheets of doped superconducting cuprates.