Low-temperature specific heat of single crystal bismuth oxyhalides

The low-temperature specific heat of layered tetragonal bismuth oxyhalide crystals, prepared by the method of chemical gas transport reactions, is measured. The specific heat is found to have Debye behavior at temperatures below 4 K. The Debye temperatures theta(D) of BiOCl (205 K), BiOBr (168 K), and BiOI (146 K) single crystals are determined. The entropy and Debye temperatures of these compounds are found to depend linearly on the corresponding correlations parameters. The low values of the Debye temperatures with the rather high values of the upper boundaries of the phonon spectrum of these compounds may be caused by a high density of phonon states at low frequencies and a substantial deviation of their phonon spectrum from a Debye spectrum at frequencies above 10 cm(-1). (C) 2011 American Institute of Physics. [doi: 10.1063/1.3592677]