Abstract
A new rare-earth rich Zintl phase Yb 11GaSb 9 was synthesized by direct fusion of the corresponding elements, and large single crystals of the compound were obtained from high temperature flux synthesis. Its crystal structure was determined by single-crystal X-ray diffraction to be orthorhombic in the non-centrosymmetric space group Iba2 (No. 45), Z = 4 ( R 1 = 3.24 % , w R 2 = 6.40 % ) with a = 11.7257 ( 12 ) Å , b = 12.3204 ( 13 ) Å , c = 16.633 ( 2 ) Å measured at 90(3) K. The structure belongs to the Ca 11InSb 9-type and can be viewed as built of isolated Sb 4-tetrahedra centered by Ga, Sb-dimers and isolated Sb anions, which are separated by Yb 2+ cations. Electron count according to the Zintl formalism suggests that the phase is electron-precise and charge-balanced, which is supported by the virtually temperature-independent magnetization for Yb 11GaSb 9. Electrical resistivity data from 2 to 400 K confirm that Yb 11GaSb 9 is a small band-gap semiconductor with room temperature resistivity ρ 298 = 45.1 m Ω cm , and low-temperature resistivity at 2 K ρ 2 = 1.9 Ω cm . As such, Yb 11GaSb 9 and related compounds might be promising materials for thermoelectric applications, and currently, efforts to synthesize new members of this family and test their thermoelectric performance are under way.
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