Abstract
We review the many-body nature of the quantum material copper carbodiimide, CuNCN, which exhibits seemingly contradictive physical properties such as a local Cu(II)–N coordination conforming to a 1st order Jahn–Teller effect, the total absence of magnetic neutron scattering and a fairly complex temperature dependence of its magnetic susceptibility indicating both Pauliand Arrhenius-like regimes. It is shown that a spin-liquid (or resonating valence bond, RVB) approach for modelling the frustrated antiferromagnetic interactions in CuNCN not only allows for a vivid physicochemical picture of the compound but also predicts three RVB states differing in their dimensionalities as a function of the temperature. In addition, RVB theory semi-quantitatively describes subtle (and to a certain extent even paradoxical) structural effects in the lattice parameters at very low temperature. The alternative magnetically ordered or spin-Peierls models of CuNCN, however, are in conflict with the physical nature of the material.
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