Pressure and temperature dependences of the dielectric constant, Raman spectra and lattice constant of SnI 4†

Abstract

The pressure and temperature dependences of the Raman frequencies, static dielectric constant and lattice constant of the molecular crystal SnI 4, were investigated. These results are combined to evaluate the pure volume and pure temperature (i.e. volume-independent) dependences of the molecular polarizability and of the Raman-active phonon self-energies. The pressure results also allow the separation of the Raman modes into external and internal modes of the crystal; the external modes exhibit a much stronger pressure dependence, and thereby larger Grüneisen parameters, than do the internal modes. The Raman frequencies increase (decrease) with increasing pressure (temperature) whereas the dielectric constant increases with both increasing pressure and temperature, emphasizing the importance of non-volume effects. In fact, it is found that the isobaric temperature dependence of the dielectric constant is dominated by the pure temperature dependence of the molecular polarizability. The pure volume dependence of the polarizability, on the other hand, is relatively small as is perhaps typical of most molecular crystals.