Electric quadrupole interaction at 111Cd and 119Sn in isostructural NiIn and CoSn compounds

The perturbed angular correlation technique and Mössbauer spectroscopy were applied to study the electric field gradient on ¹¹¹Cd and ¹¹⁹Sn probe atoms in isostructural NiIn and CoSn compounds. The ¹¹¹Cd PAC measurements performed in the temperature range 80--1100 K demonstrated the existence of two axially symmetric EFG's in each of the investigated compounds, related to the 2(d) and 1(a) probe sites in the B35 structure. A 1(a)-site preference for Cd probes in CoSn compound was observed. The temperature dependence of the quadrupole frequencies for ¹¹¹Cd in both compounds, interpreted in terms of the empirical model proposed by Christiansen et al.1], follows a T^3/2 relation with different slope parameters for each of the observed frequencies. These results are combined with the data from the Mössbauer experiment. The ¹¹⁹Sn Mössbauer spectra taken at liquid nitrogen and at room temperatures showed two quadrupole split doublets with the intensity ratio 2:1 for CoSn and 8:1 for NiIn_0.99Sn_0.01sample, giving an evidence of 2(d)-site preference for tin atoms in NiIn. The EFG values measured on ¹¹⁹Sn are 2.5 to 4 times larger than those on ¹¹¹Cd nuclei, while the ratio of the respective Sternheimer antishielding factors is equal to 0.77. Within the limits of errors no differences were observed in the magnitude and temperature dependence of Debye--Waller factors for 2(d) and 1(a) ¹¹⁹Sn positions in CoSn and NiIn lattices.