Ultrasonic evidence for hydrogen tunneling in a Laves-phase material:<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mml:mrow><mml:msub><mml:mrow><mml:mi mathvariant="normal">TaV</mml:mi></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mn>2</mml:mn></mml:mrow></mml:msub></mml:mrow><mml:mi mathvariant="normal">H</mml:mi><mml:mo>(</mml:mo><mml:mi mathvariant="normal">D</mml:mi><mml:mrow><mml:msub><mml:mrow><mml:mo>)</mml:mo></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mi>x</mml:mi></mml:mrow></mml:msub></mml:mrow></mml:math>
作者:J. E. Atteberry、R. G. Leisure、A. V. Skripov、J. B. Betts、A. Migliori
DOI:10.1103/physrevb.69.144110
日期:——
Ultrasonic measurements were performed on the C15 Laves-phase compounds TaV2H0.18, TaV2D0.17, and TaV2D0.50 from low temperatures up to 340 K. The low-temperature end of the measurements was 0.5 K for TaV2H0.18 and 3 K for TaV2D0.17 and TaV2D0.50. In many C15 compounds, including TaV2, hydrogen isotopes occupy the interstitial g sites, which form a network of linked hexagons. For all three materials, a relatively large attenuation peak was observed near room temperature for measurement frequencies in the range of 1 MHz. This peak was associated with H (D) hopping between hexagons, the rate-limiting step for long-range diffusion. Much smaller attenuation peaks were observed for both H and D in each material at low temperatures and attributed to local motion within a hexagon of g sites. These small, low-temperature loss peaks showed totally nonclassical behavior with the H (D) motion exhibiting a very large isotope effect: the relaxation rate for H was over an order of magnitude faster than that for D for similar concentrations. The relaxation rates for the local motion were satisfactorily described by a nonclassical expression with parameters for TaV2D0.50 in agreement with previous NMR measurements for this deuterium concentration. In qualitative agreement with neutron scattering results, it was necessary to assume a temperature-dependent mobile population of H (D) in order to explain the low-temperature attenuation peaks. As further evidence of the nonclassical nature of the motion, the mobile H population was not frozen out on the time scale of the ultrasonic measurements (approximate to1 MHz) down to 1 K. Previously undetected attenuation peaks were observed at an intermediate-temperature range and attributed to an order-disorder transition of the H (D) atoms. It seems likely that this transition is related to the temperature dependence of the mobile population.