Intrinsic coercive field in pseudobinary cubic intermetallic compounds. I: Dy xY 1− xAl 2 and Dy 1−δAl 2

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The thermal variation of the coercive field in pseudodobinary Laves phase compounds Dy x Y 1− x Al 2 (0.10 ⪯ x ⪯ 1.10) and Dy 1−δAl 2 ( δ = 0.025 and 0.048) has been measured from 3.7 K up to the Curie temperatures. It turns out the coercive field has two contributions: one from the intrinsic pinning of narrow domain walls in the Peierls crystal potential wells of the anisotropy energy; this contribution dominates at low temperatures and decays exponentially with the narrow domain wall width. The other comes from the pinning of the domain walls by deflecs, being explained by the Kersten theory of critical domain wall bowing. The domain walls seem very narrow in these materials, the widths estimated from the coercive field being between two and three atomic spacings.