Floating Zone Single Crystal Growth of γ-CoV2O6 with Substantially Enhanced Crystal Size and Quality

Here, we report the growth of centimeter-sized gamma-CoV2O6 single crystals by the optical floating zone method which are suitable for neutron scattering experiments. Our floating zone grown single crystals have higher magnetic ordering temperatures of 7.8 K, much more clearly visible magnetization plateaus, and substantially enhanced saturation magnetizations compared to flux-grown single crystals, which is also important with regard to the presence of orbital moment contributions within these S = 3/2 systems. Our centimeter-sized single crystals grown by the optical floating zone technique open the way toward the measurement of the peculiar magnetic properties of this intriguing system by means of elastic and inelastic neutron scattering and have been characterized by X-ray and neutron diffraction measurements.