High-Pressure Synthesis of High Quality Filled Skutterudite PrFe₄Sb₁₂ and Its Anomalous Physical Properties

Abstract

For the filled skutterudite compounds, high-pressure synthesis is thought to be a powerful technique, because it is possible to synthesize compounds that could not been grown by the flux method under ambient pressure and to improve the filling factor of rare-earth ions. In this article, we report the details of high-pressure synthesis of the filled skutterudite PrFe₄Sb₁₂ and the brief result of its physical properties. As a result, we have succeeded in synthesizing high-quality crystals of PrFe₄Sb₁₂ with higher Pr-filling factor and obtaining information about the crystalline electric field of PrFe₄Sb₁₂.