Quadrupole interaction at57Fe in zirconium metal

The nuclear quadrupole interaction at⁵⁷Fe nuclei in hcp -zirconium metal is measured in the temperature range 4.2 to 560 K using Mössbauer spectroscopy of⁵⁷Fe. The quadrupole splitting at room temperature is measured to be 0.660(8) mm/sec which corresponds to an electric field gradient of |eq|=3.17×10¹⁷ V/cm² at the⁵⁷Fe nucleus in a -Zr host. As has been observed in many other systems, the results show significant electronic contributions. The temperature variation of the quadrupole interaction is much stronger than is expected from the lattice contributions and is found to follow theT^3/2 dependence approximately.⁵⁷FeZr does not follow the universal correlation betweeneq_ion andeq_el observed in most of the normal metal hosts but follows the trends recently observed by Krusch and Forker for the transition metal hosts. Our results are compared with the predictions of the conduction electron charge shift model recently proposed by Bodenstedt and Perscheid.