High-quality single crystals of A-site ordered perovskite oxides CaCu3Ru4O12 were synthesized by flux method with Cu O serving as a flux. The typical size of these single crystals was around 1 × 1 × 1 mm^3 and the lattice constant was determined to be 7.430 ± 0.0009 ？A by using x-ray single crystal diffraction. The surfaces of the samples were identified to be（100） surface. The high quality of the single crystal samples was confirmed by the rocking curve data which have a full width at half maximum of approximately 0.02 degree. The x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy measurement was performed and the temperature-dependent specific heat, magnetic susceptibility, and electric resistivity were measured along the [100]direction of the single crystals. All these measurements showed that the physical properties of Ca Cu3Ru4O12 single crystals are similar to that of polycrystals. However, the single crystals have a lower Curie susceptibility tail and a smaller residual resistivity than polycrystals, which indicates that the amount of paramagnetic impurities can be controlled by tuning the number of defects in CaCu3Ru4O12 samples.
We present the temperature-dependent susceptibility and specific heat measurement of spinel ZnV204. The structural transition with orbital ordering and the antiferromagnetic transition with spin ordering were observed at 50 K and 37 K, respectively. By analysis of the hysteresis behavior between the specific heat curves obtained in warming and cooling processes, the structural transition was confirmed to be the first-order transition, while the antiferromagnetic transition was found to be of the second-order type. At the structural transition, the latent heat and entropy change were calculated from the excess specific heat, and the derivative of pressure with respect to temperature was obtained using the Clausius--Clapayron equation. At the magnetic transition, the width of the critical fluctuation region was obtained to be about 0.5 K by comparing with Gaussian fluctuations. In the critical region, the critical behavior was analyzed by using renormalization-group theory. The critical amplitude ratio A＋/A- = 1.46, which deviates from the 3D Heisenburg model; while the critical exponent a is -0.011, which is close to the 3D XY model. We proposed that these abnormal critical behaviors can be attributed to strong spin-orbital coupling accompanied with the antiferromagnetic transition. Moreover, in the low temperature range （2-5 K）, the Fermi energy, the density of states near the Fermi surface, and the low limit of Debye temperature were estimated to be 2.42 eV, 2.48 eV-1, and 240 K, respectively.
Ca1-xRbxCu3Ti4O12 （x=0, 0.01, 0.02 and 0.03） ceramics were synthesized by the sol-gel method. Doping Rb＋ reduces dielectric loss, which reaches minimum when x=0.02. By measuring properties of electrical conduction, larger leakage current density and height of grain-boundary Sehottky potential barrier （φB） were found in the doped samples, and φB became maximum when x=0.02. These results are attributed to the increase in the amount of oxygen vacancies and the formation of Cu-rich/Ti-poor grain-boundary layers, and it can be concluded that the dielectric loss in CCTO ceramic can be reduced by manipulating the composition and electrical properties of grain boundary.
