Frandsen Benjamin A, Fischer Henry E
Department of Physics and Astronomy, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah 84602, United States of America.
Institut Laue-Langevin, 71 avenue des Martyrs, CS 20156, 38042 Grenoble cedex 9, France.
Chem Mater. 2024 Aug 21;36(19):9089-9106. doi: 10.1021/acs.chemmater.4c01535. eCollection 2024 Oct 8.
The past few decades have made clear that the properties and performances of emerging functional and quantum materials can depend strongly on their local atomic and/or magnetic structure, particularly when details of the local structure deviate from the long-range structure averaged over space and time. Traditional methods of structural refinement (e.g., Rietveld) are typically sensitive only to the average structure, creating a need for more advanced structural probes suitable for extracting information about structural correlations on short length- and time-scales. In this Perspective, we describe the importance of local magnetic structure in several classes of emerging materials and present the magnetic pair distribution function (mPDF) technique as a powerful tool for studying short-range magnetism from neutron total-scattering data. We then provide a selection of examples of mPDF analysis applied to magnetic materials of recent technological and fundamental interest, including the antiferromagnetic semiconductor MnTe, geometrically frustrated magnets, and iron-oxide magnetic nanoparticles. The rapid development of mPDF analysis since its formalization a decade ago puts this technique in a strong position for making continued impact in the study of local magnetism in emerging materials.
在过去几十年中已经明确，新兴功能材料和量子材料的性质与性能在很大程度上可能取决于其局部原子和（或）磁结构，特别是当局部结构的细节偏离在空间和时间上平均的长程结构时。传统的结构精修方法（例如，里特韦尔德法）通常仅对平均结构敏感，这就需要更先进的结构探测方法，以提取关于短长度和时间尺度上结构相关性的信息。在这篇展望文章中，我们阐述了局部磁结构在几类新兴材料中的重要性，并介绍了磁对分布函数（mPDF）技术，它是一种从全中子散射数据研究短程磁性的有力工具。然后，我们给出了一系列将mPDF分析应用于近期具有技术和基础研究意义的磁性材料的例子，包括反铁磁半导体MnTe、几何阻挫磁体和氧化铁磁性纳米颗粒。自十年前mPDF分析正式确立以来，它的迅速发展使其在新兴材料局部磁性研究中继续发挥重要作用。
