Cryst. Res. Technol. 36 2001 8-10 1119–1122 © WILEY- VCH Verlag Berlin GmbH, 13086 Berlin, 2001 0232-1300/01/8-1010-1119 $ 17.50+.50/0 Single crystals of the ScFe 4 Al 8 intermetallic compound were obtained by the Czochralski method from a levitated melt. The X–ray powder diffraction, Laue and Berg–Barrett reflection topographies exhibit that the obtained single crystals were a good quality. The lattice parameters a = 8.652 ± 0.004 Å, c = 5.020 ± 0.003 Å were calculated from powder diffraction patterns. Keywords: intermetallic compound, single crystal growth, X-ray topography (Received April 25, 2001; Accepted July 26, 2001) 1. Introduction There is a large family of the tetragonal RT x M 12-x compounds, where R is rare earth or actinide element, with ThMn 12 type structure. These materials are formed in principle as ternaries and they can be divided into two distinct subgroups: the first one with high concentration of transition element T and the second one with lower concentration of T ranging from x = 4 to 6. The representatives of the first group are potential interesting magnetic materials, whereas the members of the second group, ScFe 4 Al 8 among them, exhibit puzzling physical properties. For determination of physical properties one needs single crystalline material. The ThMn 12 -type tetragonal compounds existing mostly as ternaries or pseudoternaries have caused recently a considerable interest both from the fundamental point of view (heavy fermion-like compounds) and as potential hard magnetic materials (alloys with a high concentration of Fe or Co) (for review, see SUSKI et al.). In the ThMn 12 -type of structure (the space group I4/mmm) there are four inequivalent crystallographic positions: the 2(a) which are occupied by the rare earth (Sc) or actinide atoms, whereas in the 8(f), 8(i) and 8(j) sites other atoms are distributed. In the RFe 4 Al 8 -type compounds the iron atoms are located in principle in the 8(f) position. These atoms form antiferromagnetic sublattice but the detailed magnetic ordering exhibits various modifications even for nonmagnetic rare earths (SCHOBINGER-PAPAMANTELLOS et al.). Sc like Y can be used as nonmagnetic component in reference compounds to determine the contribution of the f-electron element to the magnetism of intermetallics. ScFe 4 Al 8 is antiferromagnetic below about 120 K, following a Curie-Weiss law at higher temperatures; however, at low temperature in magnetic field above ~10 T it exhibits apparent saturation (KOTUR et al.). The temperature dependence of the electrical resistivity shows a clear metallic character (KOTUR et al.). Therefore, to elucidate the physical properties of this material a single crystal sample is indispensable. The polycrystalline sample of ScFe 4 Al 8 has been obtained as described by KOTUR et al. E. TALIK, A. WINIARSKI, B. KOTUR*, W. SUSKI** Institute of Physics, University of Silesia, Katowice, Poland *Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, Ukraine **W. Trzebiatowski Institute of Low Temperature and Structure Research, Polish Academy of Sciences Wroclaw, Poland Growth and X –Ray Characterization of ScFe 4 Al 8 Single Crystals