The Israel Physical Society
Home
About/Contact
Newsletters
Events/Seminars
2020 IPS Conference
Study Materials
Corporate Members
Magnetic ordering investigation in Mn2AlB2 using neutron diffraction
Daniel Potashnikov [1] , Oleg Rivin [2,3] , Andreas Hoser [3] , Sankalp Kota [4] , Michael Barsoum [4] , El'ad Caspi [2]
[1] Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Physics Department, Haifa 32000, Israel
[2] Department of Physics, Nuclear Research Centre-Negev, P.O. Box 9001, Beer Sheva 84190, Israel
[3] Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin fur Materialen und Energie, Berlin, Germany
[4] Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA
The ternary Mn2AlB2 belongs to the (TB2)nTAl ceramics (T = Cr, Fe, Mn) which exhibit promising bulk properties [M. Ade and H. Hillebrecht, Inorganic Chem. 2015] and their magnetic state was predicted to include the magneto-caloric effect (MCE) [L. Ke. et al, Phys. Rev. B]. In the present work, the magnetic state of Mn2Al11B2 is investigated using a DC SQUID magnetization and neutron diffraction. The two-fold increase in magnetization, found at ~60 and ~2 K, is shown to be accompanied by both a rapid change in lattice parameters and an increase of the neutron count of the crystallographic reflections. Below 2 K, a ferromagnetic structure, oriented within the orthorhombic a-c plane is found. This finding solves previous controversy surrounding the magnetic ground state of this compound and will contribute to the future design of magnetic properties in these materials.