Temperature-induced metamagnetic transition in ErCo3: influence of Fe and Ni substitutions for Co

The phenomenon of a temperature-induced itinerant metamagnetism in ErCo3 (at 65 K) was investigated with respect to small substitutions of Fe and Ni for Co. Five percent of Fe or Ni substitutions change the transition temperature to 170 or 25 K, respectively. The transition is accompanied by a large magneto-volume effect, ΔV/V reaches ∼0.5%, which allowed to relate the thermal expansion data with the magnetic state of the d-electrons. The change of the magnetic characteristics with substitutions is mainly ascribed to the shift of the position of the Fermi level in the hybridised d-electron energy band.