Electronic and magnetic properties of quasi-skutterudite PrCo2Ga8 compound

PrCo2Ga8 is an orthorhombic quasi-skutterudite type compound which crystallizes in the CaCo2Al8 structure type, with space group Pbam (No. 55). The Pr3+ ion has a site symmetry of Cs which predicts a crystal electric field (CEF) level splitting into 9 singlets for J = 4. However, a phase transition at Tm = 1.28 K is observed in electrical resistivity and specific heat results and is reported in this paper. The electrical resistivity shows an upturn below Tm due to the superzone-gap formation. This transition is tuneable in fields and is suppressed to lower temperatures with applied magnetic fields. The electronic specific heat Cp(T)/T increases below Tm and reaches a value of 7.37 J/(mol K2) at 0.4 K. The Sommerfeld coefficient, γ extracted from the low temperature analysis of C4f(T)/T is 637 mJ/(mol K2) indicating a possible mass enhancement of the quasiparticles. The calculated entropy value of 3.05 J/(mol K) is recovered around Tm exhibiting almost 53% of Rln2, where R is the universal gas constant. Magnetic susceptibility results obeys the Curie-Weiss law for data above 100 K with an estimated effective magnetic moment, μeff = 3.37 μB/Pr and Weiss temperature, θp = −124 K.