HfMnSb₂: A Metal‐Ordered NiAs‐type Pnictide with a Conical Spin Order

Abstract

The NiAs-type structure is one of the most common structures in solids,but metal order has been almost exclusively limited to chalcogenides.The synthesis of HfMnSb 2 is reported with an ovel metal-ordered NiAs-type structure.H fMnSb 2 undergoes ac onical spin order below 270 K, in marked contrast to conventional magnetic order observed in NiAs-type pnictides.Weargue that the layered arrangement of Hf and Mn makes it aquasi 2D magnet, where the Mn layers with localized magnetic moments (Mn 2+ ;S= 5/2) can interact only through RKKY interactions,i nstead of metal-metal bonding that is otherwise dominant for typical NiAs-type pnictides.This result suggests that controlling order-disorderinNiAs-type pnictides enables as tudy of 2D-to-3D crossover behavior in itinerant magnetic system.Supportinginformation and the ORCID identification number(s) for the author(s) of this article can be found under: http://dx.

First-principles investigation of transition of magnetic structures of ordered and disordered HfMnSb2 and TiMnSb2

“…Experimentally, it was shown that the wave-vector of the conical spin structure is q z = 0.14. 11,12) The most stable wave vector in our calculations is larger compared with the experimentally measured value.…”

“…However, the energy difference between that of θ = 90°and θ = 75°is small. It is noted that Murakami et al 11) experimentally showed that HfMnSb 2 has a conical spinstructure in which the spin angle θ is approximately 75°at low temperature. Additionally, from Fig.…”

“…However, there is a possibility that this tendency may not be limited to L1 0 -type MnAl, which have a simple crystal structure. Recently, Murakami et al 11,12) investigated the magnetic properties of Hf x Ti 1−x MnSb 2 experimentally. They showed that Hf x Ti 1−x MnSb 2 , which has a more complex crystal structure than that of L1 0 -type MnAl, exhibits a conical spin structure in the range of x = 0-0.15.…”

“…1, where η denotes the ratio of occupancy. According to the experiments, 11,12) in HfMnSb 2 , X corresponds to Hf with η = 1.0 and the space group P3-m1. In TiMnSb 2 , X corresponds to Ti with η = 0.5 and the space group P6 3 /mmc.…”