Thermoelectric transport properties of AuFe at millikelvin temperatures

Abstract

Measurements of the electrical resistivity, and both static and isoelectric thermopower have been made on a fine Au wire containing 1 ppm Fe over a range of temperatures between 7 K and 24 mK. A shallow minimum at higher temperatures and unitary limit in the resistivity data characteristic of the Kondo effect were observed in the lower temperature ranges. The minimum coincides with that observed by other workers. Both the resistivity and the two thermopowers were measured with a Superconducting Quantum Interference Detector (SQUID) which has extremely high sensitivity and a very good signal-to-noise ratio. The static and isoelectric thermopowers were measured under two different boundary conditions. The static thermopower was measured by keeping the electric current through the sample equal to zero by using a compensating current source. The isoelectric thermopower was measured under the condition that the electric field across the sample was kept equal to zero by using a superconducting short. The static and isoelectric thermopowers both exhibited a broad minimum attributed to the interaction of a dilute concentration of Fe impurities with the Au conduction electrons. The data have been analyzed in terms of linear transport theory, using the Mueller-Hartmann expression for the Kondo contribution. Since the measurements were made at low temperatures, the diffusion and phonon drag thermopowers were small enough that the major contribution to the measured thermopower was from the Kondo effect. The theory was shown to fit the data well down to 0.2 K. Below this temperature, the theoretical expression for the thermopower did not agree well with the measurements in this work...