Revisiting the properties of delafossite CuCrO2: A single crystal study

Platelet-like single-crystals of delafossite CuCrO2 have been successfully grown and characterised by X-ray diffraction and pole figures, scanning electron and atomic force microscopy. Transport measurements reveal that the resistivity is highly anisotropic, with a ratio of about 35 at 300 K between the in- and out-of-plane directions, reflecting the layered crystal structure. The magnetization and specific heat data show that CuCrO2 undergoes a unique antiferromagnetic transition at TN=24.0 K, in contrast to a recent report on CuCrO2 single-crystals [16] showing the existence of two magnetic transitions, TN1=24.2 K and TN2=23.6 K, depending on the orientation of the applied magnetic field along and perpendicular to c, respectively.