Doping effects of Cr on the physical properties of BaFe${}_{1.9-x}$Ni${}_{0.1}$Cr${}_x$As${}_2$

Abstract

We present a systematic study on the heavily Cr doped iron pnictides BaFe${}_{1.9-x}$Ni${}_{0.1}$Cr${}_x$As${}_2$ by using elastic neutron scattering, high-resolution synchrotron X-ray diffraction (XRD), resistivity and Hall transport measurements. When the Cr concentration increases from $x=$ 0 to 0.8, neutron diffraction experiments suggest that the collinear antiferromagnetism persists in the whole doping range, where the Néel temperature $T_N$ coincides with the tetragonal-to-orthorhombic structural transition temperature $T_s$, and both of them keeps around 35 K. The magnetic ordered moment, on the other hand, increases within increasing $x$ until $x=$ 0.5, and then decreases with further increasing $x$. Detailed refinement of the powder XRD patterns reveals that the Cr substitutions actually stretch the FeAs${}_4$ tetrahedron along the $c-$axis and lift the arsenic height away Fe-Fe plane. Transport results indicate that the charge carriers become more localized upon Cr doping, then changes from electron-type to hole-type around $x=$ 0.5. Our results suggest that the ordered moment and the ordered temperature of static magnetism in iron pnictides can be decoupled and tuned separately by chemical doping.

10 pages, 7 figures