PbO / PbF2 flux growth of YScO3 and LaScO3 single crystals - Structure and solid-state NMR spectroscopy

Abstract

Well-shaped small single crystals of the orthorhombic perovskites YScO 3 and LaScO3 were grown from mixtures of the corresponding sesquioxides RE2O3 in PbO/PbF2 fluxes. Both structures were refined from single-crystal diffractometer data: GdFeO3-type, Pnma, a = 570.68(7), b = 789.3(1), c = 542.44(7) pm, wR2 = 0.0363, 448 F 2 values for Y0.96ScO2.94, and a = 579.68(9), b = 810.3(2), c = 568.3(1) pm, wR2 = 0.0387, 513 F2 values for La 0.94ScO2.91, with 32 variables per refinement. The 4c rare-earth sites of both perovskites show small defects which are charge-compensated by defects on both oxygen sites, leading to the compositions LaiScO2.91 and Y0.96ScO2.94 for the investigated crystals. The rare-earth sites have been characterized by 89Y and 45Sc magic-angle spinning (MAS) NMR. The 45Sc quadrupolar interaction parameters extracted from these spectra by simulations are found to be in good agreement with those obtained from DFT calculations of the electric field gradient. © 2010 Verlag der Zeitschrift für Naturforschung, Tübingen.