Emergent Strong Ferromagnetism in Site-Ordered Laves Phase Ymgco4

A Laves phase compound YMgCo4, which forms the A-site ordered structure of the cubic Laves phase AB2, was synthesized by a solid-state reaction in a sealed stainless steel tube. Magnetization measurements revealed that YMgCo4 is a ferromagnetic compound with the Curie temperature TC = 405 K and spontaneous moment & mu;s = 1.0 & mu;B/Co. 59Co-NMR measurement yielded a spectrum similar to those of strongly ferro-magnetic Y-Co binary compounds such as Y2Co7 and YCo5 as well as magnetization results. The internal field is widely distributed, and we attempted to interpret its origin. DFT calculations predicted that the ground state of YMgCo4 is ferromagnetic. These results indicate that YMgCo4 is one of the strongest fer-romagnets among the Laves phase compounds of cobalt.& COPY; 2023 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.