Absence of metallic conductivity in tetragonal and cubic PbVO3 at high pressure

Transport properties of PbVO3, a material whose structural and electronic properties bear similarities with high-temperature copper superconductors, were investigated between 2 and 300 K and in the pressure range of 0.1 MPa and 11.3 GPa. There is a structural phase transition from about 2 GPa at room temperature from a super-tetragonal phase to a cubic phase with a significant drop of resistivity by about 5 orders of magnitude. Nevertheless, the cubic phase exhibited a semiconducting behavior of resistivity between 2 and 300 K up to 11.3 GPa. The pressure dependence of lattice parameters of the tetragonal and cubic phases was in very good agreement with results of first-principle calculations from J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 24, 435403 (2012). Fitting with the Birch–Murnaghan equation of states gave a bulk modulus K0 = 38.0(1.1) GPa and a unit cell volume V0 = 67.63(6) Å3 for the tetragonal phase and K0 = 179.5(1.4) GPa and V0 = 58.272(14) Å3 for the cubic phase. (author)