Investigations of the g factors for the orthorhombic Co2+ center in YBa2Cu2.7Co0.3O7−x at room temperature

The anisotropic g factors gx, gy and gz for the orthorhombic Co2+ center on the Cu(1) site in YBa2Cu2.7Co0.3O7−x at room temperature are theoretically investigated from the perturbation formulae of the g factors for a 3d7 ion having low spin (S = 1/2) under octahedra with orthorhombic distortion. In these formulae, the contributions to the g factors from the orthorhombic crystal-fields as well as the ligand orbitals and spin-orbit coupling are taken into account based on the cluster approach. This center may be attributed to Co2+ located in a moderately compressed oxygen octahedron with additional orthorhombic distortion. The significant decline (characterized by the reduction factor γ ≈ 0.13) of the energy separations due to the Jahn-Teller effect is suggested, by analyzing the experimental g factors. The calculated g factors based on the above contributions show good agreement with the observed values. In addition, the pronounced decrease in the intensity and the remarkable nonlinear increase in the gy of Co2+ EPR spectra as the temperature is lowered from room temperature to 150 K are also mentioned, in view of the opening of the spin gap due to antiferromagnetic interactions.