XMCD study of the magnetic behavior of R(Al1−xFex)2 compounds

We present an XMCD study performed at the Fe–K-edge through the Ho(Al1−xFex)2 Laves phases. In agreement with other series, a rare-earth contribution, XMCDR, is found. We have also observed that in these compounds XMCDR is clearly larger than that obtained in series with a lower R:Fe ratio, indicating a relation between the size of XMCDR and the number of R neighboring atoms. In addition, the rare-earth sublattice also affects the peak at lower energy, contrary to results obtained on other R–T series, where this lower-energy peak was typically considered as purely of Fe origin. The influence of the R sublattice even at 0 eV prevents from using Fe–K-edge XMCD as a fingerprint to study the magnetic character of Fe.