Quantitative non-destructive magnetic analysis of oxygen in a scandium single crystal

Abstract

The Faraday technique was employed to determine the principal magnetic susceptibilities of a scandium single crystal at room temperature, with several field strengths in the range 6–11 kOe. The field-dependence of the experimental data was quite weak, and it was deduced that only about 15% of the 60 ppm of iron, indicated by chemical analysis to be present in the starting material, was clustered to a sufficient extent to couple ferromagnetically. Bulk paramagnetic susceptibilities were obtained in the standard manner from reciprocal-field plots up to infinite-field values. The bulk susceptibilities were interpreted as indicating an oxygen content of 1.8 ± 0.3 at.% in the crystal. This interpretation used the extensive data of Spedding and Croat as a standard for the magnetic susceptibilities of pure scandium, and used their results for the effects, on the susceptibility, of various impurities. The validity of the oxygen analysis was substantiated by vacuum-fusion analysis on an equivalent piece of scandium metal.