Electronic Structure of YFe2 by EELS and Ab Initio Calculations

Abstract

The dielectric properties of the intermetallic cubic Laves phase compound YFe2 were determined by analyzing the low loss region of the EELS spectrum in a transmission electron microscope. From these data, the optical joint density of states (OJDS) was obtained by Kramers-Kronig analysis. Since maxima observed in the OJDS spectra are assigned to interband transitions; these spectra can be interpreted on the basis of numerical calculations performed with the Wien2k code, using the Fully-Linearized-Augmented-Plane wave (FLAPW) method within the Local-Spin-Density Approximation. Comparison between experimental results and theory shows good agreement.