Physical Properties of Intermetallic FE2VA1

Fe{sub 2}VAl has recently been discovered to have a negative temperature coefficient of resistivity, moderately enhanced specific heat coefficient, and a large DOS at the Fermi level by photoemission. This triggered a round of heated research to understand the ground state of this material, both theoretically and experimentally. here they report a comprehensive characterization of Fe{sub 2}VAl. X-ray diffraction exhibited appreciable antisite disorder in all of our samples. FTIR spectroscopy measurements showed that the carrier density and scattering time had little sample-to-sample variation or temperature dependence for near-stoichiometric samples. FTIR and DC resistivity suggest that the transport properties of Fe{sub 2}VAl are influenced by both localized and delocalized carriers, with the former primarily responsible for the negative temperature coefficient of resistivity. Magnetization measurements reveal that near-stoichiometric samples have superparamagnetic clusters with at least two sizes of moments. X-ray photoemission from Fe core level showed localized magnetic moments on site-exchanged Fe. They conclude that in Fe{sub 2}VAl, antisite disorder causes significant modification to the semi-metallic band structure proposed by LDA calculations. With antisite disorder considered, they are now able to explain most of the physical properties of Fe{sub 2}VAl