Effects of mixed rare earth occupancy on the low temperature properties of (R, R',R''...)Ni2Ge2 single crystals

TL;DR

This study investigates how mixed rare earth occupancy affects the low temperature magnetic properties of (R, R', R'')Ni2Ge2 single crystals, revealing the predictive power of the de Gennes parameter and robustness of metamagnetic transitions.

Contribution

It demonstrates that the de Gennes parameter effectively predicts magnetic ordering temperatures despite local anisotropy variations and shows the stability of metamagnetic transitions under heavy rare earth substitutions.

Findings

De Gennes parameter predicts ordering temperature accurately.

Metamagnetic transitions are robust to high rare earth substitutions.

Magnetic properties vary with rare earth composition but retain key features.

Abstract

Temperature and applied magnetic field dependent magnetization measurements on 34 single crystalline samples of (R, R',R''...)Ni2Ge2 compounds (R, R', R'', etc. being primarily Gd-Lu, Y), were made. These measurements reveal that, despite extremes in local moment anisotropy, the average de Gennes parameter is a remarkably good predictor of the paramagnetic to antiferromagnetic ordering temperature. In addition, the pronounced metamagnetic phase transitions seen in the low temperature phase of TbNi2Ge2 are found to be remarkably robust to high substitution levels of Gd and 25% substitutions of other heavy rare earths.