Evaluation of the critical behavior near ferromagnetic to paramagnetic phase transition in CrTe1-xSex alloys: An experimental study

Abstract

We used the conventional solid-state reaction method to prepare stoichiometric samples of CrTe1-xSex, where 0 ≤ x ≤ 0.10, and investigated the structural and critical behavior of the prepared samples. Room temperature powder X-ray diffraction, along with Rietveld refinement, revealed the emergence of the NiAs structure with P63/mmc (194) space group with increasing Se substitution. The high-temperature linear fit to inverse of the dc-susceptibility versus temperature for the mother sample resulted in an effective moment of 3.65μB Cr with Curie-Weiss temperature near 335K, which is slightly higher than the Tc of ∼332K obtained from the inflection point of magnetization versus temperature. Magnetization isotherms were employed to investigate the critical behavior of ferromagnetic CrTe1-xSex with 0.0 ≤ x ≤ 0.10 near their Curie temperatures (Tc). The magnetic behavior near Tc was found to follow 3D mean-field critical exponents with a second-order phase transition in all samples investigated. We fine-tuned the critical exponents (β, γ, and δ) using a combination of an iteration technique, the Kouvel-Fisher method, and modified Arrott plots. All samples follow a mean field behavior, with Tc ranging from 298 to 340K. The acquired values exhibit self-consistency, as indicated by the results from the Widom scaling relation. Furthermore, the magnetization isotherms exhibit a universal scaling behavior, providing additional credence to the calculated critical exponents.