High field and temperature dependent magnetisation measurements on some RE/sub 2/Co/sub 17/ single crystals

Single crystals of Pr/sub 2/CO/sub 17/ and Nd/sub 2/Co/sub 17/ have been grown using a tri-arc Czochralski method. High-field magnetization measurements up to 35 T have been performed on Pr/sub 2/Co/sub 17/ and Nd/sub 2/Co/sub 17/ at 4.2 K. The experimental curves show very large anisotropy; for fields along the c axis in Pr/sub 2/Co/sub 17/ and along the a axis in Nd/sub 2/Co/sub 17/ the magnetization does not reach the saturation value within this field range. Furthermore, the hard axis shows in both compounds a nonzero spontaneous magnetization indicating a cone structure with cone angles of about 26 degrees and 7 degrees for Pr/sub 2/Co/sub 17/ and Nd/sub 2/Co/sub 17/, respectively. Low-field (up to 6 T) temperature-dependent magnetization measurements (4.2-300 K) show that in both compounds the cone angle remains visible up to 300 K, but for Pr/sub 2/Co/sub 17/ the cone angle is drastically reduced above 150 K. These two RE/sub 2/TM/sub 17/ compounds (RE stands for a rare-earth metal and TM stands for a transition metal) with a cone structure are compared with other RE-TM compounds with a cone structure.<
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