  A new fcc oxygen defect pyrochlore structure system Lu2V2O_{7-x} with x =
0.40 to 0.65 was synthesized from the known fcc ferromagnetic semiconductor
pyrochlore compound Lu2V2O7 which can be written as Lu2V2O6O' with two
inequivalent oxygen sites O and O'. Rietveld x-ray diffraction refinements
showed significant Lu-V antisite disorder for x >= 0.5. The lattice parameter
versus x (including x = 0) shows a distinct maximum at x ~ 0.4. We propose that
these observations can be explained if the oxygen defects are on the O'
sublattice of the structure. The magnetic susceptibility versus temperature
exhibits Curie-Weiss behavior above 150 K for all x, with a Curie constant C
that increases with x as expected in an ionic model. However, the magnetization
measurements also show that the (ferromagnetic) Weiss temperature theta and the
ferromagnetic ordering temperature T_C both strongly decrease with increasing x
instead of increasing as expected from C(x). The T_C decreases from 73 K for x
= 0 to 21 K for x = 0.65. Furthermore, the saturation moment at a field of 5.5
T at 5 K is nearly independent of x, with the value expected for a fixed spin
1/2 per V. The latter three observations suggest that Lu2V2O_{7-x} may contain
localized spin 1/2 vanadium moments in a metallic background that is induced by
oxygen defect doping, instead of being a semiconductor as suggested by the C(x)
dependence.
