Abstract
Specific heat measurements have been performed on the tetragonal ThMn 12-type compounds ErFe 4Al 8 and YFe 4Al 8 in the temperature range 1.5–200 K. There are only very small anomalies associated with the magnetic ordering of the Fe sublattice in the high-temperature part of the specific heat curves. A sharp peak in the specific heat, signalling the magnetic ordering of the Er moments at 5.5 K is observed in ErFe 4Al 8. In order to separate out the effect of the Er sublattice we have subtracted the data obtained for YFe 4Al 8 in the same temperature range. From the temperature dependence of the magnetic contribution of the Er moments to the specific heat of ErFe 4Al 8 we obtained the temperature dependence of the magnetic entropy. We discussed our results in terms of the crystal-field level scheme proposed earlier on the basis of inelastic neutron scattering.
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