Electric quadrupole interaction at181Ta in RNi5 compounds

The time differential perturbed angular correlation measurements in PrNi₅, NdNi₅, GdNi₅, DyNi₅ and ErNi₅ rare-earth intermetallics with¹⁸¹Ta as probe nuclei have revealed that these impurity nuclei experience a non-axial electric quadrupole interaction. In all the cases, except in GdNi₅, the interaction frequency has a single value in the range 15–20 MHz with asymmetry parameter 0.98. In GdNi₅, however, there are two interaction frequencies (13.61 MHz and 26.89 MHz), the former being the dominant one (90%) with 0.35 and the latter (10%) with 0.98. It is concluded that in all cases the probe nuclei experiencing the highly asymmetric electric field gradient (efg) occupy the unique Ni(3g) site. Annealing studies have shown that in the case of GdNi₅ the interaction gets highly damped, while there is negligible effect in the other cases. The temperature variation of the efg in all cases seems to follow the empiricalT ^3/2 relation.