Giant increase in the Curie temperature of RCo2 intermetallic rare-earth compounds at low degrees of replacement of magnetic cobalt by nonmagnetic aluminum
Aleksandryan V. V. , Belov K. P., Levitin R. Z. , Markosyan A. S. , Snegirev V. V.
The magnetic-ordering temperature Tc ofR Co2 compounds {R is a heavy rare-earth metal) has been found to increase at low degrees (on the order of 10%) of replacement of the magnetic Co by nonmagnetic Al. The temperature Tc of TmCo2 increases by a factor of 15, that of ErCo2 by a factor of 4.3, etc. It is concluded that at these degrees of substitution there is an increase in the state density at the Fermi level of a hybridized d band.