Mossbauer spectroscopy of R₂Fe₁₄B

Abstract

The authors present results obtained by 57Fe Mossbauer spectroscopy on R2Fe14B, where R represents any of the rare earth elements except Pm, Eu and Yb. Additional measurements have been performed on oriented powder for R=Y, Pr and Ho. For the case of Y the measurements at 4.2 K were performed in applied magnetic fields up to 4 T. From these measurements it is deduced that the only compounds with an easy c axis at room temperature which show a spin reorientation of the iron sublattice at a lower temperature are the Nd and Ho alloys. Iron hyperfine fields are anisotropic and the anisotropy has different signs on different sites. An analysis of the non-4f contribution to the electric field gradient at the 161Dy or 166Er nuclei in Dy2Fe14B and Er2Fe14B is consistent with published results on 155Gd in Gd2Fe14B. In order to explain that a spin rotation is found only for R=Nd, Ho the authors invoke the relative small quadrupole moment of the 4f shell for these two ions and crystal field terms of higher than second order.