Structural and Physical Properties of Remeika Phases

摘要

<br/>The primitive cubic Yb3Rh4Sn13 type of crystal structure that belongs to space group Pm3¯n with the unit cell parameter, a, of approximately 10 Å was discovered in the early 1980s by Remeika and co-workers. The structure belongs to the group of the so-called cage-compounds, where positively charged filler-atoms (ions) are located inside large voids formed by a negatively charged, covalently bonded atomic framework. Such combination of different types of chemical bonding together with vibrational dynamics of the filler results in numerous exciting physical phenomena, including superconductivity, heavy fermion and Kondo behaviors, charge-density waves, and potentially useful thermoelectric properties, among others. These observations have rendered Remeika phases as objects of broad investigations. Over the past few decades > 100 ternary intermetallics containing fillers like alkaline-earths, rare-earths, and selected actinides embedded within frameworks consisting of d-elements from groups 8–10 as well as p-block elements, such as In, Si, Ge, Sn and Pb, have been shown to crystallize in this and closely related structures. In this chapter we critically review and summarize data about the observed structural and physical properties of Remeika phases available to date.

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