Structure and Phase Transformation in the Giant Magnetostriction Laves-Phase SmFe.

As one class of the most important intermetallic compounds, the binary Laves-phase is well-known for its abundant magnetic properties. Samarium-iron alloy system SmFe is a prototypical Laves compound that shows strong negative magnetostriction but relatively weak magnetocrystalline anisotropy. SmFe has been identified as a cubic Fd3̅m structure at room temperature; however, the cubic symmetry, in principle, does not match the spontaneous magnetization along the [111] direction. Here we studied the crystal structure of SmFe by high-resolution synchrotron X-ray powder diffraction, X-ray total scattering, and selected-area electron diffraction methods. SmFe is found to adopt a centrosymmetric trigonal R3̅m structure at room temperature, which transforms to an orthorhombic Imma structure at 200 K. This transition is in agreement with the changes of easy magnetization direction from [111] to [110] direction and is further evidenced by the inflection of thermal expansion behavior, the sharp decline of the magnetic susceptibility in the field-cooling-zero field-cooling curve, and the anomaly in the specific heat capacity measurement. The revised structure and phase transformation of SmFe could be useful to understand the magnetostriction and related physical properties of other RM-type pseudocubic Laves-phase intermetallic compounds.