Investigation on structural changes in Eu2Pd2Sn

Much research activity is dedicated to understand the relations between exotic physical properties and 2D puckered systems or/and non-centrosymmetric structures. We recently synthesized the novel non-centrosymmetric orthorhombic compound Eu2Pd2Sn where the Eu2+ magnetic substructure forms 2D-puckered layers stacked along the b-axis. This proposal aims to perform a very accurate structural analysis at low temperatures of Eu2Pd2Sn in order to understand the origin of a soft-phonon-like excitation at around 25K observed in specific heat measurements. In particular this analysis could unveil if around that temperature a progressive change of structure between the high temperature orthorhombic and the suspected low temperature monoclinic polymorph occurs. This transformation between two structures of competing energy could be triggered by a charge density wave (CDW) along the linear Pd-Pd chain.