Mössbauer and structural study of the Fe3Sn system and the effect of doping with indium

Abstract

In this work, we study the possibility of obtaining the pure Fe3Sn phase by means of two solid-state reactions (2-SSR) method in which two thermal treatments are made. Samples of Fe3Sn1-xInx were prepared with x = 0.00, 0.05, 0.10, 0.15 and 0.20 by means of two solid state reactions. These samples were studied by X-ray diffraction (DRX) and Mossbauer spectrometry (MS). Rietveld analysis showed that the DRX patterns of the samples were refined with the hexagonal crystalline phases: Fe3Sn, Fe2Sn, FeSn2, FeSn, In0.2Sn0.8 and the cubic phase Fe1.84Sn0.16. With this structural analysis, it was shown that the Fe3Sn phase appears in the Fe3Sn1-xInx sample with x = 0.00 in an approximately 90% wt. In addition, it was found that the weight percentage (wt%) of the Fe3Sn phase present in each of the 5 samples decreases as the doping or insertion of In increases in the Fe3Sn1-xInx samples, while the weight percentage of the In0.2Sn0.8 phase increases as indium doping increases. The other crystalline phases present in the samples do not change monotonously or follow some pattern. The Mossbauer spectra for the samples were adjusted with sextets associated with the ferromagnetic phases such as: Fe3Sn, Fe3Sn2, FeSn and Fe1.84Sn0.16. The Mossbauer adjustments showed that the percentage of spectral area of the Fe3Sn magnetic phase decreases as indium doping increases and the percentage of spectral area of the Fe3Sn2, FeSn and Fe1.84Sn0.16 phases increase.