Handbook on the Physics and Chemistry of Rare Earths. vol.27

This was the last volume in this distinguished series of handbooks published in the twentieth century. It contains three chapters dealing with rare earth alloys and intermetallic compounds. Chapter one deals with ternary rare earth-germanium alloys, their phase diagrams and the crystal structures of the intermediate phases. In particular the group VIII metals are discussed, of which the first member of each row (iron, ruthenium and osmium) forms only half the number of compounds as the other two members, cobalt and nickel and their congeners. The author also observes that the ternary alloy systems of the rare earths and germanium with the s and p elements have hardly been investigated. The chapter ends with a discussion on the general trends and unusual features observed in the various sets of ternary phase diagrams. Chapters two describes in detail the various structure types that have been adopted by the rare earth-germanium ternary intermetallic compounds. The correlations, crystal chemistry and interrelationships of the 135 structure types are discussed. This paper also reviews quaternary compounds and superstructures. The final chapter deals with scandium alloys and intermetallic compounds, binary, ternary and higher order systems. The authors summarize the various phase diagrams of scandium systems and present the crystal structure properties of the various intermediate phases. The chapter finishes with a presentation of physical property data on scandium intermetallic phases. The results are divided into three groups - compounds which have a magnetic ground state, a superconducting ground state and those with neither a magnetic or a superconducting ground state.