Investigation of structural, microstructural and magnetic properties of YbxY1-xF3 solid solutions

Abstract

In this investigation, we have synthesized YbxY1-xF3 solid solutions by fluorination of yttrium and ytterbium sesquioxides with ammonium hydrogen difluoride. According to the XRD analysis, all synthesized YbxY1-xF3 samples have an orthorhombic crystal structure belonging to the β-YF3 structural type. The refinement of crystal structure was done by the Rietveld method within the Pnma space group using the TCH pseudo-Voigt function. The anisotropic peak broadening was analyzed, and the average apparent crystallite size is about 50 nm with a small anisotropy of shape, while the significant microstrain that is highly anisotropic is present in all samples. The temperature-dependent magnetic susceptibility was analyzed by applying the model of a free ion perturbed by the crystal field. We have obtained the effective magnetic quantum numbers Mieff of four Kramer's doublets of Yb3+ ion along with the entire crystal field splitting of the 2F7/2 manifold of Yb3+ in YF3. The acquired maximum energy splitting of the ground level is about 150 K in our most diluted samples. The field-dependent isothermal magnetization measurements were carried out at various temperatures and analyzed by classical Langevin function. Results obtained from magnetic measurements show that all YbxY1-xF3 (x ≠ 0) solid solutions exhibit pure paramagnetic behavior in the whole temperature range from 2 to 300 K, with a predominant antiferromagnetic exchange interactions.