The thermally assisted magnetization and dielectric relaxation in spin frustrated Ca3Co2O6

The incompatibility between the antiferromagnetic exchange interaction and the triangular lattice makes Ca ₃Co ₂O ₆ become a frustrated system. It leads to the existence of disordered magnetic structure in the frustrated spin chains. At low temperature, the disordered spins are frozen. In this study, the Ca ₃Co ₂O ₆ was prepared and its low temperature dynamic behaviors were characterized. The spin freezing peak and the decay of magnetization with time well confirm the thermally assisted magnetization. Since that the flip of the spins can result in the conservation of the total angular momentum and the conserved angular momentum can make the adjacent lattice feel a transfer torque. In response to variation of magnetization, the dielectric permittivity of Ca ₃Co ₂O ₆ also presents relaxation feature. For the isothermal dielectric permittivity, it not only depends greatly on the sweep rates of magnetic field but also decays with time. This detectable variation of the dielectric property in Ca ₃Co ₂O ₆ suggests that the thermally assisted dielectric relaxation is an alternative method for characterizing the dynamic behaviors of the frustrated system.