Abstract

This paper reports a thermal and spectroscopic study of Pr(HCOO)(3) crystal in the range 300-10 K. Room temperature Raman phonons are assigned based on group theory analysis and correlations with other rare earth formates. Differential scanning calorimetric (DSC) measurements show that there is a slight anomaly in the behavior of the heat capacity at around 140 K. Temperature-dependent Raman spectra were recorded and the changes observed are discussed. These results suggest that Pr(HCOO)(3) undergoes a second-order phase transformation at temperatures lower than 140 K. Based on the group-to-subgroup relations, we propose a possible low-temperature structure and discuss the driving mechanism of the phase transformation. Copyright (C) 2004 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.

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