• Stewart, Glen A.
• Evans, Jacob P.
• Cadogan, J. M.
• Mitchell, Emma E.
• Hutchison, Wayne D.

Abstract

<p>Conventional magnetometry yields a low temperature bulk magnetic moment of about 4<i>μ</i>_B/Dy³⁺ in an applied field of <i>μ</i>₀<i>H</i> =9 T for thin and thick dysprosium nitride (DyN) films. This is significantly lower than the maximum possible value of 10<i> μ</i>_B/Dy³⁺. Ion-assisted deposition was used to grow 5.7-<i>μ</i>m-thick rare earth nitride DyN films on organic Kapton® substrates.¹⁶¹Dy Mössbauer spectroscopy (with its time scale on the order of nanoseconds) indicates thermal relaxation between fully stretched ±10<i>μ</i>_B levels of a low-lying Kramers doublet, which is inconsistent with the Dy³⁺ site's ideal cubic symmetry. However, a small tetragonal distortion [ϵ ≈ -0.024(10)] observed using x-ray powder diffraction is compatible with an additional rank 2 crystal field term,<i> B</i>⁰₂ ≈ -1.0(4)K, approaching the magnitude estimated to bring this about. The observed magnetic behavior can then be described using a two-level, molecular field model with θ_C set to ≈6-8K, which is substantially smaller than the accepted ordering temperature of T_C≈17-26K.</p>

Topics

• Deposition
• impedance spectroscopy
• nitride
• Mössbauer spectroscopy
• Dysprosium