Influence of nonmagnetic disorder on specific heat and electrical resistivity in Kondo lattice system CePd1-xGexIn

摘要

The alloy system CePd1-xGexIn with 0.1 <= x <= 0.4 was investigated by means of heat capacity and electrical resistivity measurements. Its low-temperature behavior has been found to be governed by the interplay of Kondo effect and Ruderman-Kittel-Kasuya-Yosida (RKKY) interactions in the presence of atomic disorder in nonmagnetic atoms sublattice. The coherent Kondo state, observed for CePdIn, gradually vanishes with increasing the Ge-content. The incoherent Kondo state, which characterizes Ge-rich alloys, appears very sensitive to applied magnetic field. The observed systematic changes in the temperature- and field-dependent electrical transport in CePd1-xGexIn manifest the important role of quantum correction due to electron-electron interactions in weakly localized regime. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.