A Corkscrew Model for Highly Coupled Anisotropic Compliance in Ruddlesden-Popper Oxides with Frozen Octahedral Rotations

Abstract

A "corkscrew" mechanism, that couples changes in the in-plane rotation angle to strains along the layering axis, has been proposed previously to explain increased compliance in certain Ruddlesden-Popper phases that facilitates uniaxial negative thermal expansion over a wide temperature range. Following the procedure developed to study many simple, auxetic geometries, in the present study we derive the elastic compliances predicted by this corkscrew mechanism assuming that the four shortest metal-anion bonds remain stiff and changes in bond angle are modelled by a harmonic angle potential. We subsequently analyse the limitations of this model and show that it may be extended to An+1BnO3n+1 Ruddlesden-Popper oxide phases of general layer thickness n.