Murakami Taito, Yamamoto Takafumi, Takeiri Fumitaka, Nakano Kousuke, Kageyama Hiroshi
Department of Energy and Hydrocarbon Chemistry, Graduate School of Engineering, Kyoto University , Nishikyo-ku, Kyoto 615-8510, Japan.
CREST, Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) , Kawaguchi, Saitama 332-0012, Japan.
Inorg Chem. 2017 May 1;56(9):5041-5045. doi: 10.1021/acs.inorgchem.7b00031. Epub 2017 Apr 10.
We successfully synthesized the ternary bismuthides LaMBi (M = Ti, Zr, Hf). These compounds crystallize in the hexagonal HfSnCu-anti type structure (space group: P6/mcm) consisting of face-sharing MBi octahedral chains and hypervalent Bi linear chains, both separated by La atoms. Magnetic susceptibility and electrical resistivity measurements revealed that all of the compounds, including the solid solution LaTi(BiSb), exhibit a Pauli paramagnetic behavior without any trace of superconductivity down to 1.85 K, as opposed to a recently reported 4 K superconductivity in LaTiSb. The absence of superconductivity is supported by first-principles band calculations of LaTiBi and LaTiSb that demonstrate similar electronic structures with three-dimensional Fermi surfaces.
