Local lattice instabilities

Our latest project focuses on the crystals which are chemically perfect. However, by carefully choosing the elements we can make their electronic structure locally unstable and disordered. A classical example us such a behaviour is the LaMnO₃ in which Mn³⁺ has degenerate electron configuration which is prone to Jahn-Teller distortions. We will use single crystal diffuse scattering in order to investigate the correlations between the local instabilities, and construct realistic model of these crystals capturing both local instabilities and global periodic structure.