Eur. Phys. J. B (2013) 86: 129
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2013-30939-0

Regular Article

Study on effect of Ge doping on CeNi₅^*

¹ Institute of Experimental Physics, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Watsonova 47, 043 53 Košice, Slovakia
² CNR-SPIN and Department of Chemistry, University of Genova, Via Dodecaneso 31, 16146 Genova, Italy
³ Faculty of Humanities and Natural Sciences, University of Prešov, ul. 17.novembra 1, 080 78 Prešov, Slovakia

^a e-mail: vasilova@saske.sk

Received: 12 October 2012
Received in final form: 22 December 2012
Published online: 4 April 2013

Abstract

The effect of the Ni/Ge substitution on the ground state of CeNi₅ is presented. The new ternary germanides CeNi_5−xGe_x (x = 0.1, 0.2) were prepared by arc melting techniques and compared with CeNi₅. Both CeNi_4.9Ge_0.1 and CeNi_4.8Ge_0.2 crystallize in the CaCu₅ structure. The samples resulted to be single phase as confirmed by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and by electron probe microanalysis (EPMA). No phase transition was observed from measurements of susceptibility, magnetization, resistivity and heat capacity, although substitution of Ge/Ni seems to favor the suppression of spin fluctuations.