Single crystal growth and pressure effect of an antiferromagnet Ce2CuGe6

Abstract: We succeeded in growing single crystals of an antiferromagnet with the non-centrosymmetric orthorhombic crystal structure by the Bi-flux method. The magnetic properties were studied by measuring the magnetic susceptibility, specific heat and electrical resistivity at ambient pressure and under high pressure. The antiferromagnetic easy-axis is found to be the [010] direction (b-axis), while the other directions correspond to hard-axes in magnetization. Furthermore we studied an effect of pressure on the electronic state by measuring the electrical resistivity under pressures up to 8GPa. The Néel temperature with at ambient pressure increases slightly with increasing pressure, and then decreases rapidly above 5GPa. The Néel temperature is found to be zero around 7.2GPa. The heavy fermion state is formed in this pressure region. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]