To Örebro University

We show that repulsive local Coulomb interaction alone can drive valence-skipping charge disproportionation in the degenerate d-band, resulting in effective negative-U. This effect is shown to originate from anisotropic orbital-multipole scattering, and it occurs only for d1,d4,d6, and d9 fillings (and their immediate surroundings). Explicit boundaries for valence-skipping are derived, and the paramagnetic phase diagram for d4 and d6 is calculated. We also establish that the valence-skipping metal is very different, in terms of its local valence distribution, compared to the atomiclike Hund's metal. These findings explain why transition-metal compounds with the aforementioned d-band fillings are more prone to valence-skipping charge order and anomalous superconductivity.