Single crystal growth and structure of La₄Cu₃MoO₁₂

We report the synthesis and structure determination of single crystals of La₄Cu₃MoO₁₂ grown from a CuO/KCl flux. This material, whose structure had previously been reported based solely on polycrystalline diffraction data, shows frustrated magnetic behavior and an anti-ferromagnetic ordering of spin-1/2 triangles at low temperatures. The structural and atomic parameters determined from the single crystal data are in very good agreement with those reported previously. However, HREM data showed evidence for disorder in the stacking of the Cu₃MoO₄ planes, and thus a twinned structural refinement in space group P2₁/m was replaced by an equivalent disordered structural model in space group Pm. This development of a synthetic route to single crystals of La₄Cu₃MoO₁₂ will allow a more detailed investigation of its complex electronic and magnetic properties.