Synthesis and structural, magnetic, thermal, and transport properties of several transition metal oxides and aresnides

Oxide compounds containing the transition metal vanadium (V) have attracted a lot of attention in the field of condensed matter physics owing to their exhibition of interesting properties including metal-insulator transitons, structural transitions, ferromagnetic and an- tiferromagnetic orderings, and heavy fermion behavior. Binary vanadium oxides VnO_2n-1 where 2 ≤ n ≤ 9 have triclinic structures and exhibit metal-insulator and antiferromagnetic transitions.[1–6] The only exception is V₇O₁₃ which remains metallic down to 4 K.[7] The ternary vanadium oxide LiV₂O₄ has the normal spinel structure, is metallic, does not un- dergo magnetic ordering and exhibits heavy fermion behavior below 10 K.[8] CaV₂O₄ has an orthorhombic structure[9, 10] with the vanadium spins forming zigzag chains and has been suggested to be a model system to study the gapless chiral phase.[11, 12] These provide great motivation for further investigation of some known vanadium compounds as well as to ex- plore new vanadium compounds in search of new physics. This thesis consists, in part, of experimental studies involving sample preparation and magnetic, transport, thermal, and x- ray measurements on some strongly correlated eletron systems containing the transition metal vanadium. The compounds studied are LiV₂O₄, YV₄O₈, and YbV₄O₈. The recent discovery of superconductivity in RFeAsO_1-xF_x (R = La, Ce, Pr, Gd, Tb, Dy, Sm, and Nd), and AFe₂As₂ (A = Ba, Sr, Ca, and Eu) doped with K, Na, or Cs at the A site with relatively high T_c has sparked tremendous activities in the condensed matter physics community and a renewed interest in the area of superconductivity as occurred following the discovery of the layered cuprate high T_c superconductors in 1986. To discover more supercon- ductors with hopefully higher T_c’s, it is extremely important to investigate compounds having crystal structures related to the compounds showing high T_c superconductivity. Along with the vanadium oxide compounds described before, this thesis describes our investigations of magnetic, structural, thermal and transport properties of EuPd₂Sb₂ single crystals which have a crystal structure closely related to the AFe₂As₂ compounds and also a study of the reaction kinetics of the formation of LaFeAsO_1-xF<sub>x