Uncovering orbital liquid behaviour in a nitrite perovskite

Orbital ordering is responsible for many key physical properties including magnetism, colossal magnetoresistance and battery cathode resilience. The ordering transitions of Jahn-Teller distortions typically occur at high temperatures due to the large local strains. In this proposal (which pairs HRPD & POLARIS proposals), we will investigate a perovskite structured material in which the Co(II) orbital ordered is greatly suppressed: suggesting that there is an orbital liquid phase without any site disorder. We will use POLARIS to monitor the orbital liquid phase using total scattering and HRPD to measure the ordered phase and average structure to produce a complete picture of this.