Effects of disorder and isotopic substitution in the specific heat and Raman scattering in LuB12

Abstract

Precision measurements of the specific heat and spectral intensity I(ω) of Raman scattering for LuNB12 single crystal samples with various boron isotopes (N = 10, 11, nat) have been performed at low and intermediate temperatures. A boson peak in the low-frequency part of the I(ω) spectrum has been observed for the first time for lutetium dodecaboride at liquid nitrogen temperatures. It has been shown that low-temperature anomalies in the specific heat, along with the features of Raman spectra, can be interpreted in terms of the transition to a cageglass state at T* = 50−70 K, which appears when Lu3+ ions are displaced from the centrosymmetric position in cavities of a rigid covalent boron sublattice towards the randomly located boron vacancies. The concentrations of various two-level systems that correspond to two types of vibrational clusters with correlation lengths of 12–15 and 18–22 A, respectively, have been estimated. The vibrational density of states of LuB12 has been calculated from Raman spectra in the model of soft atomic potentials. An approach has been proposed to explain the dielectrization of the properties of the YbB12 compound at T < T*, as well as the features of the formation of magnetic structures in RB12 antiferromagnets (R = Tb, Dy, Ho, Er, Tm) and the suppression of superconductivity in LuB12.