A study of the crystal structure at low temperature in the metal–insulator transition compound PrRu4P12

Abstract To clarify the mechanism of the metal–insulator transition occurring at T MI =62 K in PrRu 4 P 12 , we have studied the crystal structure below T MI using synchrotron radiation X-ray diffraction. In the analysis, 1200 independent Bragg spots were used assuming the space group to be either Pm 3 or P23. The obtained structural parameters are quite similar for both space group, which suggests that the higher symmetry space group, Pm 3 , is a reasonable choice for the low temperature phase of PrRu 4 P 12 .