A High-Pressure Structure in Curium Linked to Magnetism

• DOI: 10.1126/science.1112453
• Publication Date: 2005-07-01T02:40:58Z
• Authors: S. Heathman; R. G. Haire; T. Le Bihan; A. Lindbaum; M. Idiri; P. Normile; S. Li; R. Ahuja; B. Johansson; G. H. Lander
• Keywords: Curium; Magnetism; Monoclinic crystal system

Curium lies at the center of actinide series and has a half-filled shell with seven 5 f electrons spatially residing inside its radon core. As function pressure, curium exhibits five different crystallographic phases up to 100 gigapascals, which all but one are also found in preceding element, americium. We describe here structure curium, Cm III, monoclinic symmetry, space group C2/c , intermediate pressures (between 37 56 gigapascals). Ab initio electronic calculations agree observed sequence structures establish that it is spin polarization curium's stabilizes III. The results reveal few elements lattice stabilized by magnetism.