Colossal negative thermal expansion in reduced layered ruthenate

Large negative thermal expansion (NTE) has been discovered during the last decade in materials of various kinds, particularly materials associated with a magnetic, ferroelectric or charge-transfer phase transition. Such NTE materials have attracted considerable attention for use as thermal-expansion compensators. Here, we report the discovery of giant NTE for reduced layered ruthenate. The total volume change related to NTE reaches 6.7% in dilatometry, a value twice as large as the largest volume change reported to date. We observed a giant negative coefficient of linear thermal expansion alpha= -115 x 10(-6) K-1 over 200 K interval below 345 K. This dilatometric NTE is too large to be attributable to the crystallographic unit-cell volume variation with temperature. The highly anisotropic thermal expansion of the crystal grains might underlie giant bulk NTE via microstructural effects consuming open spaces in the sintered body on heating.