We investigated the rare-earth transition-metal oxide series, $L{n}_2{\text{CuTiO}}_6$ ($Ln=\text{Y}$, Dy, Ho, Er, and Yb), crystallizing in the hexagonal structure with noncentrosymmetric $P{6}_{3}cm$ space group for possible occurrences of multiferroic properties. Our results show that while these compounds, except $Ln=\text{Y}$, exhibit a low-temperature antiferromagnetic transition due to the ordering of the rare-earth moments, the expected ferroelectric transition is frustrated by the large size difference between Cu and Ti at the B site. Interestingly, this leads these compounds to attain a rare and unique combination of desirable paraelectric properties with high dielectric constants, low losses, and weak temperature and frequency dependencies. First-principles calculations establish these exceptional properties result from a combination of two effects. A significant difference in the $M{\text{O}}_5$ polyhedral sizes for $M=\text{Cu}$ and $M=\text{Ti}$ suppress the expected cooperative tilt pattern of these polyhedra, required for the ferroelectric transition, leading to relatively large values of the dielectric constant for every compound investigated in this series. Additionally, it is shown that the majority contribution to the dielectric constant arises from intermediate-frequency polar vibrational modes, making it relatively stable against any temperature variation. Changes in the temperature stability of the dielectric constant among different members of this series are shown to arise from changes in relative contributions from soft polar modes.

• Received 7 June 2010

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.82.134203