Study of the EFG Trends in Zr₂T (T = Fe, Co, Ni) Intermetallic Compounds

Abstract

We use the linear muffin-tin orbital formalism, in the atomic sphere approximation, to investigate the trends of the electric field gradient (EFG) at the nucleus for the non-equivalent sites in Zr 2 T (T = Fe, Co and Ni) intermetallic compounds. As all those compounds crystallize in the same C16 crystallographic structure, they offer a rare opportunity to investigate electronic structure effects coming from transition metals on the EFG at Zr site. Those results are compared with EFG values obtained from quadrupole coupling constant measurements performed with the time differential perturbed angular correlation (TDPAC) technique, using the 181 Ta probe.