Pressure-Induced Neutral to Ionic Phase Transition in TTF-Fluoranil, DimethylTTF-Fluoranil and DimethylTTF-Chloranil: A Comparative THz Raman Study

The Neutral to Ionic phase Transition (NIT) that occurs in few mixed stack charge transfer cocrystals at high pressure or low temperature is a charge instability combined with a structural instability. The lattice contraction, which increases the 3D Coulomb interactions, favors a higher degree of charge transfer. Due to Peierls instability, this leads to the dimerization of the stack, breaking its inversion symmetry. The 3D interactions also determine the arrangement of the adjacent dimerized polar stacks, making the ionic phase ferroelectric or antiferroelectric. The role of these parameters that modulate the NIT has been widely studied in Tetrathiafulvalene-haloquinone cocrystals. Here, we compare the high-pressure behavior of three of them: the newly synthesized TTF-FA and DMTTF-FA with the known DMTTF-CA and isostructural DMTTF-FA. We followed the evolution of the lattice phonons via THz Raman spectroscopy, assessing the pressure-dependent structural changes. While the FA-based crystals undergo strong first-order NIT, DMTTF-CA shows a continuous transition. The high-pressure behavior of each crystal is also compared with the low-temperature behavior.