Recently, a research group from the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics (SIOM), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) carried out a research on the growth and transport properties of the CeSb₂ single crystal. The related research results have been published in Crystengcomm on June 18, 2021. This paper was selected by the editor as the front cover article.

The rare-earth antimonides have aroused broad interest in both fundamental and applied fields for their novel physical phenomena such as superconductivity, magnetothermal, and magnetoresistance at low temperatures. However, the undesirable crystalline quality of these compounds limits the in-depth study of the microscopic mechanisms of these compounds such as electrical transport, electronic structure, and magnetic structure.

In this report, researchers designed a series of group with different raw materials ratios to study the mechanism of self-flux growth of these compounds. After systematically investigation, the results show that the high flux ratio (≥85%) would lead to the inhomogeneity, poor crystallinity, and cracking of the crystal, while the low flux ratio (＜8%) would cause a decrease in transport performance. Based on this, researchers have obtained the most suitable growth conditions for these compounds and grew out the highest quality single CeSb₂ crystal reported so far. Besides, the result of electrical transport measurement also revealed the unique magnetoresistance characteristics of CeSb₂, which originates from the Kondo effect and orbital-scattering effect.

This work provides useful guidelines for the future growth of rare-earth antimonides and is helpful to study the mechanisms of heavy fermions and Kondo physics.

This work was supported by the Shanghai Sailing Program and Natural Science Foundation of China.

Fig. 1. The set-up of crystal growth system, and the transport properties of CeSb₂. (Image by SIOM)

Article website:
https://doi.org/10.1039/D1CE00557J\

Contact:
WU Xiufeng
General Administrative Office
Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, CAS
Email: xfwu@siom.ac.cn
Web: http://english.siom.cas.cn/