Mössbauer, magnetic, and electronic-structure studies of YFe12-xMox compounds

Mössbauer spectra, magnetization measurements, and self-consistent spin-polarized electronic structures of YFe12-xMox, where x=0.5, 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, and 4.0, are reported. The ternary compounds YFe12-xMox have the crystalline tetragonal ThMn12 structure. Analyses of the Mössbauer spectra show that Mo atoms occupy the 8i Fe sites of the ThMn12 structure, in agreement with previous observations. Room-temperature magnetic and Mössbauer measurements show that the compounds with x≤2.0 are ferromagnetic and with x3.0 are paramagnetic. Measurements at 25 K show that all the samples are magnetically ordered. The magnetic hyperfine field is found to decrease with increasing Mo concentration, which is in qualitative agreement with the calculated magnetic moments. The calculated magnetization decreases less rapidly with increasing x than the experimental data. In general the data suggest that with increasing Mo concentration there is an increase of antiferromagnetic coupling among the Fe moments, which leads to cluster-glass or spin-glass-like phenomena. The measured isomer shift relative to α-iron is found to decrease linearly with x.