Negative thermal expansion (NTE) is an intriguing physical
property
of solids, which is often related to the lattice, phonons, charges,
and spin. However, most of the studies are mainly focused on the phonons,
and the spin-related mechanism in open framework compounds remains
unclear owing to the lack of more experimental pieces of evidence.
Here, based on the first-principles calculations combined with the
quasi-harmonic approximation, we carried out studies of the NTE properties
of ScF3 with metal dopants to reveal the roles in NTE of
both the spatial effects and spin states. For most of the dopants,
the NTE coefficient decreases with the decrease of ionic radius, obeying
a linear scaling relationship. Interestingly, for magnetic impurities
with a spin phase transition from a high spin state to a low spin
state, we show that they will exhibit a Jahn–Teller distortion
behavior and enhance the longitudinal vibration mode. In turn, the
longitudinal vibration mode has a large positive Grüneisen
parameter, which can offset the NTE obviously. This work not only
proposes a new insight into the NTE mechanism about impurities in
ScF3 but also provides an approach to tailor the NTE properties
for fluorides with magnetic impurities as well as oxides.