Diamagnetism in spinel compound CuIr2S4

The diamagnetic susceptibility in CuIr2S4 is independent of temperature up to just below metal-insulator transition temperature. If activation of electrons to higher levels occurs with breaking dimer pairs, the residual electrons at the dimer position and the activated electrons to the anti-bonding orbital make localized free spins giving a Langevin paramagnetism. Assuming no magnetic interaction between the localized free spins, the susceptibility is calculated using the energy gap obtained from the conductivity assumed to be a conventional semiconductor. The calculated results cannot explain the temperature-independent diamagnetism. The real energy gap is too large for thermal electron activation, however, conduction is induced thermally over several orders of magnitude within insulating phase. From the above results, we claimed new conduction mechanism named traveling dimer conduction: dimer shifts its position by electron hopping to neighbor position without electron activation over the energy gap. (c) 2006 Published by Elsevier B.V.