Ytterbium electron system

This chapter commences with a review of a limited number of ternary hydride systems that have two common features. First, at least one of the two metal constituents is an alkali or alkaline earth element which independently forms a binary hydride with a metal hydrogen bond that is characterized as saline or ionic. The second metal, for the most part, is near the end of the d-electron series and with the exception of palladium, is not known to form binary hydrides that are stable at room temperature. This review stems from our own more specific interest in preparing and characterizing ternary hydrides where one of the metals is europium or ytterbium and the other is a rarer platinum metal. The similarity between the crystal chemistry of these di-valent rare earths and Ca2+ and Sr2+ is well known so that in our systems, europium and ytterbium in their di-valent oxidation states are viewed as pseudoalkaline earth elements. 

A systematic study of the Eu/Yb and Eu/Ba alloys has been made [52, 53]. In the ytterbium system, the Curie temperature falls from 90 to 5 K and the saturation field also falls from 265 to 160 kG as the ytterbium content increases from 0 to 92 at. %. The relationships are linear apart from a discontinuity at 50 at. % where there is a phase change. Similarly for barium the Curie temperature falls from 90 to 40 K and the field from 265 to 206 kG as the barium content rises to 50 at. %. However, the chemical isomer shift is not significantly altered. The sign of the magnetic field is known to be negative from neutron diffraction data. Calculations suggest that a contribution of —340 kG to the field in europium metal arises from core polarisation, that +190 kG comes from conduction-electron polarisation by the atoms own 4/-electrons, and that —115 kG comes from conduction-electron polarisation, overlap, and covalency effects from neighbouring atoms. 

Intermediate-valent YbCuGa shows a TEP of —4 xV/K at room temperature as is observed in most ytterbium-based mixed valent systems. This suggests that the majority earners in YbCuGa are electrons (Adroja et al. 1990). 

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