Abstract

209Bi NMR and NQR investigation of the small-gap semiconductor Ce3Bi4Pt3.

Highlights

  • The compound Ce3Bi4Pt3 is one of about a dozen small-gap semiconducting compounds involving either rare-earth or actinide metals. ' Most of these semiconductors possess a cubic strucf ture, and the behavior of their lattice parameters suggests a mixed-valence state for the electrons

  • This behavior is characteristic of dense Kondo systems, where the reduction in the susceptibility at low temperatures is produced by the hybridization of the local moments with the conduction electrons

  • The measurements of the temperature dependence of v& show a dramatic change in the electric field gradient (EFG) at a nuclear site as the material goes from an insulating to a conducting state. (Previous boron NMR measurements on YbB&2 and SmB6 were unable to resolve a quadrupole splitting because of the small boron quadrupole moment. )

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Summary

15 JUNE 1994-I

Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545 (Received 14 February 1994). We report measurements of the temperature dependence of the Bi nuclear quadrupole resonance frequency v&, the Knight shift K, and the spin-lattice relaxation rate 1/Tl in the small-gap semiconductor Ce3Bi4Pt3 between 1.8 and 300 K. The v& data in the Ce compound show a characteristic departure from metallic-to-insulating behavior when the sample is cooled below TM =80 K, the temperature of the susceptibility maximum, attributable to a loss of low-frequency vibrational modes in the insulating state. A change in the scaling between the susceptibility and both the isotropic and axial Knight shifts at temperature T~ provides evidence that hybridization between the Ce 4f orbitals and the conduction electrons is responsible for the gap structure. The temperature dependence of the 1/Tl data is consistent with a model electronic density of states possessing a temperature-independent gap 5 of 180 K and a bandwidth of the order of 1600 K.

INTRODUCTION
SAMPLE PREPARATION
The total Hamiltonian for nuclear spin in magnetic
Nuclear quadrupole resonance
Spin-lattice relaxation rates
CONCLUDING REMARKS

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