Pressure-induced frustration in charge ordered spinel AlV₂O₄

Dellagiustaite: A Novel Natural Spinel Containing V2+

Dellagiustaite, ideally Al2V2+O4, is a new spinel-group mineral from Sierra de Comechingones, San Luis, Argentina, where it is found associated with hibonite (containing tubular inclusions, 5–100 μm, of metallic vanadium), grossite, and two other unknown phases with ideal stoichiometry of Ca2Al3O6F and Ca2Al2SiO7. A very similar rock containing dellagiustaite has been found at Mt Carmel (northern Israel), where super-reduced mineral assemblages have crystallized from high-T melts trapped in corundum aggregates (micro-xenoliths) within picritic-tholeiitic lavas ejected from Cretaceous volcanoes. In the holotype, euhedral grains of dellagiustaite are found as inclusions in grossite. The empirical average chemical formula of dellagiustaite is (Al1.09 V 0.91 2 + V 0.87 3 + Mg0.08 Ti 0.04 3 + Mn0.01)Σ3O4, but it may show limited replacement of V2+ by Mg and of V3+ by Al. As Al is the dominant trivalent cation, the ideal formula is Al2V2+O4 according to the current IMA rules. Dellagiustaite shows the usual space group of spinel-group minerals (Fd 3 ¯ m, R1 = 1.46%) with a = 8.1950(1) Å. The observed mean bond lengths <T–O> = 1.782(2) Å and <M–O> = 2.0445(9) Å, the observed site scattering (T = 13.3 eps, M = 22.5 eps), and the chemical composition show that dellagiustaite is an inverse spinel: T tetrahedra are occupied by Al3+, whereas M octahedra are occupied by V2+ and V3+, leading to the site assignment as TAlM( V 0.91 2 + V 0.88 3 + Al 0.09 3 + Mg0.08 Ti 0.03 3 + Mn0.01)O4.

Vanadium clusters formation in geometrically frustrated spinel oxide AlV2O4

The spinel oxide AlV₂O₄ is a unique material, in which the formation of clusters is accompanied by atomic, charge and orbital ordering and a rhombohedral lattice distortion. In this work a theory of the structural phase transition in AlV₂O₄ is proposed. This theory is based on the study of the order-parameter symmetry, thermodynamics, electron density distribution, crystal chemistry and mechanisms of formation of the atomic and orbital structures of the rhombohedral phase. It is established that the critical order parameter is transformed according to irreducible representation k₉(τ₄) (in Kovalev notation) of the Fd \bar{3}m space group. Knowledge of the order-parameter symmetry allows us to show that the derived AlV₂O₄ rhombohedral structure is a result of displacements of all atom types and the ordering of Al atoms (1:1 order type in tetrahedral spinel sites), V atoms (1:1:6 order type in octahedral sites) and O atoms (1:1:3:3 order type), and the ordering of d_xy, d_xz and d_yz orbitals. Application of the density functional theory showed that V atoms in the Kagomé sublattice formed separate trimers. Also, no sign of metallic bonding between separate vanadium trimers in the heptamer structure was found. The density functional theory study and the crystal chemical analysis of V-O bond lengths allowed us to assume the existence of dimers and trimers as main clusters in the structure of the AlV₂O₄ rhombohedral modification. The trimer model of the low-symmetry AlV₂O₄ structure is proposed. Within the Landau theory of phase transitions, typical diagrams of possible phase states are built. It is shown that phase states can be changed as a first-order phase transition close to the second order in the vicinity of tricritical points of the phase diagrams.