Ultra-high vacuum compatible induction-heated rod casting furnace

Abstract

We report the design of a radio-frequency induction-heated rod casting furnace that permits the preparation of polycrystalline ingots of intermetallic compounds under ultra-high vacuum compatible conditions. The central part of the system is a bespoke water-cooled Hukin crucible supporting a casting mold. Depending on the choice of mold, typical rods have a diameter between 6 mm and 10 mm and a length up to 90 mm, suitable for single-crystal growth by means of float-zoning. The setup is all-metal sealed and may be baked out. We find that the resulting ultra-high vacuum represents an important precondition for processing compounds with high vapor pressures under a high-purity argon atmosphere up to 3 bar. Using the rod casting furnace, we succeeded to prepare large high-quality single crystals of two half-Heusler compounds, namely the itinerant antiferromagnet CuMnSb and the half-metallic ferromagnet NiMnSb.

arXiv comment5 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (6)

• Skyrmion Lattice in a Doped Semiconductor
• Magnetic phase diagram of MnSi inferred from magnetization and ac susceptibility
• Semimetalic antiferromagnetism in the half-Heusler compound CuMnSb
• Spin-resolved Fermi surface of the localized ferromagnetic Heusler compound Cu${}_2$MnAl measured with spin-polarized positron annihilation
• Optical floating zone growth of high-quality Cu2MnAl single crystals
• Quality of Heusler Single Crystals Examined by Depth Dependent Positron Annihilation Techniques

Cited by in corpus (10)

• Symmetry breaking, slow relaxation dynamics, and topological defects at the field-induced helix reorientation in MnSi
• History dependence of the magnetic properties of single-crystal Fe${}_{1-x}$Co${}_x$Si
• Evolution of magneto-crystalline anisotropies in Mn${}_{1-x}$Fe${}_x$Si and Mn${}_{1-x}$Co${}_x$Si as inferred from small-angle neutron scattering and bulk properties
• Single crystal growth of CeTAl${}_3$ (T = Cu, Ag, Au, Pd and Pt)
• Interplay of itinerant magnetism and reentrant spin-glass behavior in Fe${}_x$Cr${}_{1-x}$
• Ultra-high vacuum compatible preparation chain for intermetallic compounds
• Canted antiferromagnetism in phase-pure CuMnSb
• Magnetic properties of the noncentrosymmetric tetragonal antiferromagnet EuPtSi${}_3$
• Compositional Studies of Metals with Complex Order by means of the Optical Floating-Zone Technique
• Surface pinning and triggered unwinding of skyrmions in a cubic chiral magnet