Absence of static magnetic order in lightly-doped Ti1-xSc xOCl down to 1.7 K

Abstract

Impurity-induced magnetic order has been observed in many quasi-1D systems including doped variants of the spin-Peierls system CuGeO3. TiOCl is another quasi-1D quantum magnet with a spin-Peierls ground state, and the magnetic Ti sites of this system can be doped with nonmagnetic Sc. To investigate the role of nonmagnetic impurities in this system, we have performed both zero-field and longitudinal-field μSR experiments on polycrystalline Ti1-xScxOCl samples with x=0, 0.01, and 0.03. We verified that TiOCl has a nonmagnetic ground state, and we found no evidence for spin freezing or magnetic ordering in the lightly-doped Sc samples down to 1.7 K. Our results instead suggest that these systems remain nonmagnetic up to the x=0.03 Sc doping level. © 2011 American Physical society.