Recently, Prof. Li Xiang, from School of Physics, BIT, Prof. Zhou Jianshi, from University of Texas at Austin, and Prof. John B. Goodenough, the winner of Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Prof. Hu Zhiwei, from Max Planck Institute, as well as Researcher Jin Changqing and Researcher Long Youwen, from Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, have made important progress in the high-pressure synthesis of PbMnO3 perovskite and its charge disproportionation and complex magnetism, and published a cover article in Chemistry of Materials, an international famous journal in the field of materials.

The Pb-3d transition metal perovskite system shows a wealth of physical properties, including ferroelectricity, antiferromagnetism, and charge disproportionation. PbMnO3 perovskite is successfully synthesized by using a large chamber high-pressure and high-temperature device with international advanced level, and its unique lattice structure and strange physical properties are systematically studied. The results of synchrotron radiation X-ray diffraction spectrum, X-ray absorption spectrum and second harmonic spectrum show that PbMnO3 perovskite has a non-polar tetragonal structure and a novel Pb2+0.875Pb4+0.125Mn3+0.25Mn4+0.75O3 charge disproportionation configuration. The results of transportation, magnetic measurement and first-principle calculations indicate that PbMnO3 perovskite may be the only ferromagnetic metal in the Pb-3d transition metal perovskite system, and it undergoes a rare metamagnetism transition under a low critical magnetic field. The above results provide an important reference for studying the mutual coupling among the lattice, charge, spin, orbital degrees of freedom of the new quantum functional materials.

Paper link: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.chemmater.0c02706