Sinking Sugar Cubes or Flux-Grown Metallic Antiferromagnets?

Gebre, Mebatsion

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/114232 Copy

Description

Title

Sinking Sugar Cubes or Flux-Grown Metallic Antiferromagnets?

Author(s)

Gebre, Mebatsion

Issue Date

2022

Keyword(s)

• Materials Science
• Engineering

Abstract

Scanning electron micrograph (SEM) of concatenated manganese gold (MnAu) crystals embedded in epoxy. The crystals were grown and filtered out from a bismuth metal flux centrifuged at 650 °C. This particular piece looking like a sinking chain of sugar cubes was a byproduct of a project to grow antiferromagnetic Mn2Au single crystals. Mn2Au is a promising metallic antiferromagnet candidate for device applications and fundamental physics studies of electrical and magnetic properties. Since Mn2Au is thermodynamically impossible to grow from melt as a single crystal, growing it in a non-reactive flux with low melting point like bismuth offers an alternative synthesis route. While the piece in the image was not the desired product, it gave insight into the precipitation temperature and amount of flux required to optimize growth conditions. Epoxy used to secure the ~100 micron scale crystals to the SEM sample holder gives the impression that the crystals are sinking into some liquid.

Type of Resource

• Text
• Image

Language

eng

Permalink

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/114232

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2022 Mebatsion Gebre

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