Study of morphology and magnetic properties of the HoNi3 crystalline and ball-milled compound

The morphology and magnetic properties of the HoNi3 crystalline and ball-milled intermetallic compounds are presented. The polycrystalline HoNi3 bulk compound crystallizes in the rhombohedral PuNi3 — type of crystal structure and indicates ferrimagnetic arrangement with the Curie temperature of TC = 57 ± 2 K, the helimagnetic temperature Th = 23 ± 2 K with the total saturation magnetic moment of 6.84 μB/f.u. at 2 K. The use of the ball-milling method leads to the formation of HoNi3 nanoflakes with typical thickness of less than 100 nm prone to agglomeration upon milling. The increase of grinding duration leads to the reduction in crystallite size, which was confirmed by various complementary microscopical and diffraction studies. Moreover, the increase in milling duration results in the emergence of the relatively small coercivity (HC), remanence (Mr) and a variation of the saturation magnetization (MS).