Chatterjee Snehashish, Giri Saurav, Majumdar Subham, Dutta Prabir, Singha Pintu, Banerjee Aritra
School of Physical Sciences, Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, 2A & B Raja S. C. Mullick Road, Jadavpur, Kolkata 700032, India.
Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Jakkur, Bangalore 560064, India.
J Phys Condens Matter. 2022 May 25;34(29). doi: 10.1088/1361-648X/ac6e1f.
The quaternary Heusler compound NiFeTiSn can be considered to be derived from the exotic pseudogap-compound FeTiSn by the replacement of one Fe atom by Ni. In contrast to FeTiSn, which shows a disorder induced ferromagnetic phase, the ground state of NiFeTiSn is antiferromagnetic with the signature of spin canting. Interestingly, NiFeTiSn shows a Griffiths-like phase characterized by isolated ferromagnetic clusters before attaining the antiferromagnetic state. The Griffiths-like phase is possibly associated with the antisite disorder between Fe and Ti sites as evident from our powder x-ray diffraction study. The compound also shows rather unusual temperature dependence of resistivity, which can be accounted by the prevailing structural disorder in the system. NiFeTiSn turned out to be a rare example where Griffiths-like phase is observed in a semiconducting 3transition metal based intermetallic compound with antiferromagnetic ground state.
四元赫斯勒化合物NiFeTiSn可被认为是由奇异的赝能隙化合物FeTiSn通过用Ni取代一个Fe原子而衍生出来的。与表现出无序诱导铁磁相的FeTiSn不同，NiFeTiSn的基态是反铁磁的，具有自旋倾斜的特征。有趣的是，NiFeTiSn在达到反铁磁态之前表现出以孤立铁磁团簇为特征的类格里菲斯相。从我们的粉末X射线衍射研究可以明显看出，类格里菲斯相可能与Fe和Ti位点之间的反位无序有关。该化合物还表现出相当不寻常的电阻率温度依赖性，这可以用系统中普遍存在的结构无序来解释。NiFeTiSn是一个罕见的例子，即在具有反铁磁基态的半导体3过渡金属基金属间化合物中观察到类格里菲斯相。
