Structural, magnetic, and electrical properties of ruthenium oxides

Early reports of antiferromagnetism in CaRuO3 will be discussed within the framework of our recent experiments. We have observed that slight Ru deficiency (∼4%) leads to a weak feature in the magnetic susceptibility. Temperature-dependant time-of-flight (TOF) neutron powder diffraction data revealed no long-range magnetic order in the Ruthenium deficient CaRu 0.96O3 sample. More careful analysis of magnetization data indicates that the feature in chi(T) can be attributed to a weak ferromagnetic phase which forms below an ordering temperature of T = 147 K. This phase is destroyed with Lanthanum doping (∼2%) and annealing in reducing conditions dramatically shifts this feature. Measurements of the magnetic susceptibility versus temperature of the series Ca1-xLaxRu 0.96O3 (0 ≤ x ≤ 0.12) led to further study of CaRuO 3 and SrRuO3. The structural parameters of CaRuO 3 and SrRuO3 powder samples, obtained from neutron time-of-flight data analysis via Rietveld refinement, will be compared.