ISIS Neutron and Muon Source Data Journal

Muon spin rotation to determine internal fields in HfNiSn

Abstract: HfNiSn is a semiconducting material with cubic crystal symmetry, and as such it should not show any anisotropy in electronic transport.However, at low temperatures we observe deviations from this normal semiconducting behavior: the longitudinal resistance (where a voltage drop is measured along the path of an applied current) is clearly different from the transverse resistance (where the voltage is measured perpendicular to the current path). Such a behavior is normally observed in an applied magnetic field, but in HfNiSn we see this anisotropy already at zero magnetic field. This result is surprising, as both theoretical calculations and measurements the magnetic properties of HfNiSn indicate it is a nonmagnetic material. It is in fact strongly diamagnetic. We suspect that HfNiSn may possess an internal magnetic field, which we want to verify using the spins of muons as a probe.

Principal Investigator: Dr Lucia Steinke
Experimenter: Dr Adrian Hillier

DOI: 10.5286/ISIS.E.RB1710394

ISIS Experiment Number: RB1710394

Publisher: STFC ISIS Neutron and Muon Source

Data format: RAW/Nexus
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Data Citation

The recommended format for citing this dataset in a research publication is as:
[author], [date], [title], [publisher], [doi]

For Example:
Dr Lucia Steinke et al; (2017): Muon spin rotation to determine internal fields in HfNiSn , STFC ISIS Neutron and Muon Source, https://doi.org/10.5286/ISIS.E.RB1710394

Data is released under the CC-BY-4.0 license.