Electronic and magnetic nature of shandite-type A2Co3S2 (A = Sn, In)

We investigated electronic and magnetic nature of A(2)Co(3)S(2) (A = Sn, In) to reveal two different characteristics of metallic Co-Sn and strongly correlated electronic Co-S bondings. Co 2p X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) shows a complicated and mixed-valence like feature with strong satellite. This origin can be explained by two different characteristics of Co-Sn/Co-S bonding nature. This feature is consistent with characteristic electron-density distributions obtained by the maximum-entropy method (MEM)-based pattern fitting analysis and the LSDA + U band calculation. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.