Disappearance of spin glass behavior in ThCr2Si2-type intermetallic PrAu2Si2

TL;DR

This study investigates the apparent spin-glass behavior in PrAu2Si2, revealing it is due to impurities and disorder in non-ideal samples, and that the perfectly ordered compound is paramagnetic with crystal-field effects.

Contribution

The paper demonstrates that the observed spin-glass behavior in PrAu2Si2 is not intrinsic but caused by sample impurities and disorder, clarifying its true magnetic nature.

Findings

Spin-glass behavior varies with sample annealing conditions.

Pure PrAu2Si2 is paramagnetic, not spin-glass.

Impurities and disorder induce spin-glass effects.

Abstract

It is unexpected that a spin-glass transition, which generally occurs only in the system with some form of disorder, was observed in the ThCr2Si2-type compound PrAu2Si2 at a temperature of ~3 K. This puzzling phenomenon was later explained based on a novel dynamic frustration model that does not involve static disorder. We present the results of re-verification of the reported spin-glass behaviors by measuring the physical properties of three polycrystalline PrAu2Si2 samples annealed under different conditions. Indeed, in the sample annealed at 827 C for one week, a spin-glass transition does occur at a temperature of Tf=2.8 K as that reported previously in the literature. However, it is newly found that the spin-glass effect is actually more pronounced in the as-cast sample, and almost completely disappears in the well-annealed (at 850 C for 4 weeks) sample. The apparent sample dependence of the magnetic characteristics of PrAu2Si2 is discussed by comparing it with similar phenomena observed in the isomorphic compounds URh2Ge2 and CeAu2Si2. Our experimental results strongly suggest that the spin-glass behavior observed in the as cast and insufficient annealed samples is most likely due to the presence of small amount of crystalline impurities and/or partial site disorder on the Au and Si sublattices, and thus is not the inherent characteristic of ideal ThCr2Si2-type PrAu2Si2. The perfectly ordered PrAu2Si2 should be regarded as a paramagnetic system with obvious crystal-field effects.