Abstract
Magnetization measurements have been performed in static (up to 14 T) and pulsed (up to 60 T) magnetic fields on a HoFe6Al6 single crystal with a tetragonal crystal structure of ThMn12 type. HoFe6Al6 is a ferrimagnet with exact compensation of the Ho and Fe sublattices at low temperatures, the spontaneous magnetic moment is Ms = 0 at 4.2 K. At elevated temperatures, Ms passes through a wide maximum (4.2 μB at 200 K) and vanishes at the Curie temperature, TC = 315 K. The compound displays a high magnetic anisotropy of the easy-plane type, a noticeable anisotropy exists also within the easy plane with the [110] axis as the easy magnetization direction. HoFe6Al6 exhibits two field-induced magnetic phase transitions along the easy [110] axis and two more along the [100] axis, the hard direction in the basal plane. The critical fields of the lower- and higher-field transitions display qualitatively different temperature dependencies. A T–H magnetic phase diagram has been constructed for the [100] and [110] directions. The Ho–Fe inter-sublattice exchange constant has been determined to be nHoFe = 3.8 T/μB.
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