Magnetic properties of new ternary R6Ga3Fe11 compounds

Abstract

Three new rare earth–iron ternary compounds with the La6Ga3Co11 structure (I4/mcm), Pr6Ga3Fe11, Nd6Ga3Fe11, and Sm6Ga3Fe11, are found to be ferromagnetic with Curie temperatures of 320, 397, and 462 K, respectively. Large anisotropies have been observed from the magnetization curves and the anisotropy field is larger than 7 T at room temperature. First-order magnetization processes were observed for all samples throughout the temperature range of 4.2–300 K. Point charge calculations give A20=1070 K a−20 at the 16l site and −283 K a−20 at the 8f site.