Abstract
The highest antiferromagnetic (AFM) temperature in Ce based compounds has been reported for CeScGe with , but its local or itinerant nature has not been deeply investigated yet. In order to shed more light into this unusually high ordering temperature we have investigated structural, magnetic, transport, and thermal properties of alloys within the range of stability of the CeScSi-type structure: . Along this concentration range, this strongly anisotropic system presents a complex magnetic phase diagram with a continuous modification of its magnetic behavior, from ferromagnetism for (with ) to AFM for (with ). The onset of the AFM phase is associated to a metamagnetic transition with a critical field increasing from at to at , coincident with an increasing contribution of the first excited crystal electric field doublet. At a critical point a second transition appears at . In contrast to observations in itinerant systems like or , no evidences for significant hybridization of the electrons at large Sc contents were found. Therefore, the exceptionally large of CeScGe can be attributed to an increasing Ruderman-Kittel-Kasuya-Yosida interaction between Ce double layers as Sc content grows.
3 More- Received 13 February 2015
- Revised 21 April 2015
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.91.174408
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