Fe-moment instability in Ti 1-x Sc x Fe 2 Laves-phase compounds

The magnetic properties of the pseudo-binary Laves-phase compounds Ti1-xScxFe2 were investigated by means of magnetisation and high-resolution powder neutron diffraction techniques. For x<0.2 a transition from an antiferromagnetic state to a canted one with a ferromagnetic component in the basal plane is observed, while for 0.2<x<0.27 the transition is from a collinear ferromagnetic state along the c-axis to a canted one. For x∼0.3, an additional first-order transition is observed at low temperature accompanied by a large magnetovolume anomaly due to the increase of the intrinsic moment of the Fe atoms at the 2a site.