Elastic and thermal properties of the layered compound (CH3NH3)2FeCl4

Abstract
Several elastic constants of the perovskite-type layer-structure compound (CH3NH3)2FeCl4 have been measured. The anomaly of the C66 mode and the lambda -type heat capacity near the structural phase transition from the tetragonal high-temperature phase to the orthorhombic room-temperature phase gave the critical exponents for heat capacity alpha = alpha '=0, the amplitude ratio A/A'=1.01 and the crossover exponent phi =1.21. This set of exponents confirms the results of the renormalisation group methods for the three-dimensional XY model (n=2, d=3). The elastic soft mode C66 in the tetragonal low-temperature phase has been observed. The authors surveyed the somewhat questionable orthorhombic low-temperature phase under hydrostatic pressure up to 6 kbar.