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We study the effects of Cu substitution in Fe1.1 Te, the nonsuperconducting parent compound of the iron-based superconductor, Fe1+yTe1-xSex, utilizing neutron scattering techniques. It is found that the structural and magnetic transitions, which occur at ∼60 K without Cu, are monotonically depressed with increasing Cu content. By 10% Cu for Fe, the structural transition is hardly detectable, and the system becomes a spin glass below 22 K, with a slightly incommensurate ordering wave vector of (0.5 -- &dgr;, 0,0.5) with S being the incommensurability of 0.02, and correlation length of 12 Â along the a axis and 9 Â along the c axis. With 4% Cu, both transition temperatures are at 41 K, though short-range incommensurate order at (0.42,0,0.5) is present at 60 K. With further cooling, the incommensurability decreases linearly with temperature down to 37 K, below which there is a first-order transition to a long-range almost-commensurate antiferromagnetic structure. A spin anisotropy gap of 4.5 meV is also observed in this compound. Our results show that the weakly magnetic Cu has a large effect on the magnetic correlations; it is suggested that this is caused by the frustration of the exchange interactions between the coupled Fe spins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our inelastic neutron scattering study of spin excitations in iron telluride reveals remarkable thermal evolution of the collective magnetism. In the temperature range relevant for the superconductivity in FeTe1-xSex materials, where the local-moment behavior is dominated by liquidlike correlations of emergent spin plaquettes, we observe unusual, marked increase of magnetic fluctuations upon heating. The effective spin per Fe at T ≈ 10 K, in the phase with weak antiferromagnetic order, corresponds to S ≈ 1, consistent with the recent analyses that emphasize importance of Hund's coupling [K. Haule and G. Kotliar, New J. Phys. 11, 025021 (2009).]. However, it grows to S ≈ 3/2 in the high-T disordered phase, suggestive of the Kondo-type behavior, where local magnetic moments are entangled with the itinerant electrons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has recently been demonstrated that dynamical magnetic correlations measured by neutron scattering in iron chalcogenides can be described with models of short-range correlations characterized by particular choices of four-spin plaquettes, where the appropriate choice changes as the parent material is doped towards superconductivity. Here we apply such models to describe measured maps of magnetic scattering as a function of two-dimensional wave vectors obtained for optimally superconducting crystals of FeTe1-xSex. We show that the characteristic antiferromagnetic wave vector evolves from that of the bicollinear structure found in underdoped chalcogenides (at high temperature) to that associated with the stripe structure of antiferromagnetic iron arsenides (at low temperature); these can both be described with the same local plaquette, but with different interplaquette correlations. While the magnitude of the low-energy magnetic spectral weight is substantial at all temperatures, it actually weakens somewhat at low temperature, where the charge carriers become more itinerant. The observed change in spin correlations is correlated with the dramatic drop in the electronic scattering rate and the growth of the bulk nematic response upon cooling. Finally, we also present powder neutron diffraction results for lattice parameters in FeTe1-xSex indicating that the tetrahedral bond angle tends to increase towards the ideal value upon cooling, in agreement with the increased screening of the crystal field by more itinerant electrons and the correspondingly smaller splitting of the Fe 3d orbitals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The as-grown single crystal Fe1.o8Te0.55Seo.45 with the tetragonal PbO-type structure is nonsuperconducting owing to the excess Fe. Superconductivity is induced after oxygen annealing with an onset and zero resistance transition temperature around 14.5 K and 1 1.5 K. respectively. The oxygen doping is evidenced by electron energy loss spectroscopy and accompanied by improved homogeneity in the remaining PbO-type phase, as well as an increase in the L3/L2 intensity ratio of the Fe-L2,3 edge, indicating an increase in Fe valence. Local phase transformation from the tetragonal PbO-type phase to the hexagonal NiAs-type phase is also observed after oxygen annealing [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]