High-field magnetism of Kondo semiconductors CeNiSn and CeRhSb

✍ Scribed by K. Sugiyama; T. Inoue; K. Oda; T. Takabatake; H. Tanaka; H. Fujii; K. Kindo; M. Date

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1995
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 213 KB
• Volume: 211
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0921-4526
• DOI: 10.1016/0921-4526(94)00991-4

✦ Synopsis

The longitudinal magnetoresistance of the Kondo semiconductor single crystals CeNiSn and CeRhSb are i~vestigated up to 36T below 4.2 K. Large negative magnetoresistances are found at low temperatures with the field along the b-and c-axis, similar to the field direction along the a-axis in the previous study.

The equiatomic ternary compounds CeNiSn and CeRhSb show a small band gap of the order of 10 K at low temperatures and they are ranked as the Ce-based Kondo insulators [1,2]. Both compounds crystallize in an orthorhombic structure which is closely related to the e-TiNiSi-type structure. The electrical and magnetic properties of CeNiSn are highly anisotropic as expected from the low crystal symmetry. The magnetic easy axis is the a-axis and the amount of the magnetization along the a-axis is large compared with those along the other two axes [3]. The gap energy of CeNiSn is also anisotropic and is estimated from the electrical resistivity p as 2.4, 5.5 and 5.0 K along the a-, b-and c-axes, respectively [1].

The large negative magnetoresistance of CeNiSn up to 15 T with the field along the a-axis reveals that the energy gap is quenched around 15T, and the magnetization along the a-axis up to 36 T shows a broad metamagnetic magnetization around 15 T [3]. However, small negative magnetoresistances are found with the field along the