Synthesis and structural, magnetic, thermal, and transport properties of several transition metal oxides and aresnides

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Oxide compounds containing the transition metal vanadium (V) have attracted a lot of attention in the field of condensed matter physics owing to their exhibition of interesting properties including metal-insulator transitons, structural transitions, ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic orderings, and heavy fermion behavior. Binary vanadium oxides V{sub n}O{sub 2n-1} where 2 {le} n {le} 9 have triclinic structures and exhibit metal-insulator and antiferromagnetic transitions. The only exception is V{sub 7}O{sub 13} which remains metallic down to 4 K. The ternary vanadium oxide LiV{sub 2}O{sub 4} has the normal spinel structure, is metallic, does not undergo magnetic ordering and exhibits heavy fermion behavior below 10 K. CaV{sub 2}O{sub 4} has an orthorhombic structure with the vanadium spins forming zigzag chains and has been suggested to be a model system to study the gapless chiral phase. These provide great motivation for further investigation of some known vanadium compounds as well as to explore new vanadium compounds in search of new physics. This thesis consists, in part, of experimental studies involving sample preparation and magnetic, transport, thermal, and x-ray measurements on some strongly correlated eletron systems containing the transition metal vanadium. The compounds studied are LiV{sub 2}O{sub 4}, YV{sub 4}O{sub 8}, and YbV{sub 4}O{sub 8}. more » The recent discovery of superconductivity in RFeAsO{sub 1-x}F{sub x} (R = La, Ce, Pr, Gd, Tb, Dy, Sm, and Nd), and AFe{sub 2}As{sub 2} (A = Ba, Sr, Ca, and Eu) doped with K, Na, or Cs at the A site with relatively high T{sub c} has sparked tremendous activities in the condensed matter physics community and a renewed interest in the area of superconductivity as occurred following the discovery of the layered cuprate high T{sub c} superconductors in 1986. To discover more superconductors with hopefully higher T{sub c}'s, it is extremely important to investigate compounds having crystal structures related to the compounds showing high T{sub c} superconductivity. Along with the vanadium oxide compounds described before, this thesis describes our investigations of magnetic, structural, thermal and transport properties of EuPd{sub 2}Sb{sub 2} single crystals which have a crystal structure closely related to the AFe{sub 2}As{sub 2} compounds and also a study of the reaction kinetics of the formation of LaFeAsO{sub 1-x}F{sub x}. « less