Eur. Phys. J. B 84, 177-181 (2011)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2011-20159-1

Regular Article

Thermal transport in the intermetallic compound CeNi₄Cr

Institute of Molecular Physics, PAS, Poznań, Poland

^a e-mail: tomtol@ifmpan.poznan.pl

Received: 4 March 2011
Received in final form: 12 September 2011
Published online: 10 November 2011

Abstract

Electrical resistivity, thermopower (TEP), thermal conductivity and the thermoelectric figure of merit are studied for the CeNi₄Cr compound, which has been previously suggested to be a fluctuating valence system with a tendency to the increase of the effective mass at low temperatures. The analysis of the thermoelectric properties confirms such a possibility and provides characteristic parameters like the Debye temperature, Fermi energy and the position of the f band. Both the thermopower and the magnetic part of the electrical resistivity could be analyzed within a similar model assuming a narrow f-band of the Lorentzian form near the Fermi energy. The thermal conductivity shows that the phonon contribution exceeds the electronic one below 220 K.