Abstract
We present a systematic study of the structural and magnetic properties of a series of powder samples of SrYb (Formula presented.) Er (Formula presented.) O (Formula presented.) with different Yb/Er concentrations. Magnetometry and neutron diffraction have been used to study the magnetic ground states of the compound series, while inelastic neutron scattering was used to investigate the crystal field excitations for a chosen concentration. These results show that the crystal structure remains the same for all compositions, while the lattice parameters increase linearly with the Er content. All compounds showed some type of magnetic transition below 1 K, however, both the magnetic structure and nature of the phase transition vary throughout the series. The samples present a non-collinear magnetic structure with the moments lying on the ab plane for low Er content. For high Er content, the magnetic structure is collinear with the moments aligned along the c-axis. A critical concentration is found where there is a bifurcation between zero-field and field-cooled magnetic susceptibility. This irreversible process could be due to the random mixture of single-ion magnetic anisotropies.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 529 |
Journal | Crystals |
Volume | 13 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Mar 2023 |
Funding
We would like to thank Helmholtz Zentrum Berlin for supporting Juanita Hincapie Bedoya during this project through the summer student program. This work is based on experiments performed at the Swiss spallation neutron source SINQ, Paul Scherrer Institute, Villigen, Switzerland, ISIS neutron and muon source, UK, and at the research reactor BER-II at the Helmholtz Zentrum Berlin, Germany. We thank Henrik M. Ronnow for kindly providing access to the Cryogenic SQUID magnetometer. We also thank Oleg Petrenko, Manh Duc Le, and Bella Lake for helpful discussions.
Keywords
- lanthanides
- magnetic frustration
- magnetic properties
- single-ion anisotropy
- solid-state reaction