Antiferromagnetic order in the Cd6R (R = rare earth) quasicrystal approximants
Abstract
Many theoretical treatments of spins on aperiodic lattices support the notion of long-range antiferromagnetic order. However, to date, there has been no experimental confirmation of long-range magnetic order in quasicrystalline systems. The absence of long-range magnetic order extends to crystalline approximant phases of the icosahedral structures as well. Surprisingly, the 1/1 approximant to the Cd-Mg-R icosahedral phases, Cd6 R , appears to be an exception to the rule. Here, we report on the results of x-ray resonant magnetic scattering measurements on Cd6 R approximants which show that long range antiferromagnetic order is, indeed, realized. For R = Tb and Ho, viewing the structure as a body-centered cubic packing of Tsai clusters, we find that the R ions associated with the icosahedral cluster at the corner of the unit cell are antiferromagnetically correlated with the R ions associated with the icosahedral cluster at the body-center of the unit cell.
Work at the Ames Laboratory was supported by the Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, US Department of Energy. Work at the Tokyo University of Science was supported by KAKENHI (Grant No. 20045017)- Publication:
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APS March Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- March 2013
- Bibcode:
- 2013APS..MARY11002G