Superparamagnetism of potassium-doped tris(diphenacyl) iron

Abstract

Synthesis and exploration of intriguing physical properties of alkali-metal-doped aromatic hydrocarbons have been the important research topics in the fields of physics, chemistry and materials science. In this work, a powder sample of potassium-doped tris(diphenacyl) iron molecular crystal is prepared by the high-vacuum annealing method. The X-ray diffraction results show that the crystal structure of the synthesized sample is different from that of pristine tris(diphenacyl)iron. The direct current (DC) magnetic susceptibilitiy shows a pronounced hump structure near 8.0 K, which is distinct from the paramagnetism of pristine material in the whole temperature range of 1.8–300 K. The alternating current (AC) magnetic susceptibility shows that the hump has a significant frequency dependence, which can safely rule out the possibility of antiferromagnetism. The combination of the Vogel-Fulcher law, the Néel-Brown model and the critical slowing down model reveals that the hump originates from superparamagnetism with a blocking temperature (<i>T</i><sub>B</sub>) of about 8.0 K. According to the results of Raman spectroscopy, it can be confirmed that the 4s electrons of potassium in the doped material are transferred to the benzene ring of tris(diphenacyl)iron, causing the characteristic Raman modes to be red-shifted and the local magnetic moment to form. Our work is of great significance in exploring alkali-metal-doped aromatic hydrocarbons, and provides a new route for searching organic magnetic materials.