Heat capacity measurements on FeAs-based compounds: a thermodynamic probe of electronic and magnetic states

We report heat capacity measurements of the pnictide materials SmFeAsO1−xFx , NdFeAsO, LaFeAsO1−xFx and LiFeAs. For SmFeAsO1−xFx ,with x close to 0.1, we use 3He measurements to demonstrate a transfer of entropy from the peak at TN to a previously unidentified ~ 2K feature, which grows with increasi...

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Detalhes bibliográficos
Principais autores: Baker, P, Giblin, S, Pratt, F, Liu, R, Wu, G, Chen, X, Pitcher, M, Parker, D, Clarke, S, Blundell, S
Outros Autores: Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft
Formato: Journal article
Idioma:English
Publicado em: Institute of Physics 2009
Assuntos:
Descrição
Resumo:We report heat capacity measurements of the pnictide materials SmFeAsO1−xFx , NdFeAsO, LaFeAsO1−xFx and LiFeAs. For SmFeAsO1−xFx ,with x close to 0.1, we use 3He measurements to demonstrate a transfer of entropy from the peak at TN to a previously unidentified ~ 2K feature, which grows with increasing doping. Our results on the Sm samples are compared with a similarly doped La sample to elucidate the crystal field levels of the Sm3+ ion at 0, 20 and 45 meV, which lead to a Schottky-like anomaly, and also show that there is a significant increase in the Sommerfeld coefficient γ when La is replaced by Sm or Nd. The lattice contribution to the heat capacity of the superconducting oxypnictides is found to vary negligibly with chemical substitution. We also present a heat capacity measurement of LiFeAs showing the feature at Tc, which is significantly rounded and much smaller than the BCS value.