The Fermi surface. II. d-block and f-block metals

Abstract

In part I of this article (Adv. Phys., d18, 681 (1969)) we described the present state of knowledge of the shapes of the Fermi surfaces of the metals of the s-block and p-block of the periodic table. In part II we now turn to the description of the Fermi surfaces of the d-block and f-block metals; these include the metals in groups IB, IIB, IIIA, IVA, VA, VIA, VIIA, and VIII of the periodic table. These blocks of the periodic table include the transition metals, the rare-earth metals (or lanthanide metals) and the actinide metals. The Fermi surfaces of many of these metals are quite complicated and there is often no very close resemblance to the predictions of the free-electron model; this is in contrast to most of the Fermi surfaces which were discussed in part I. Another important feature is that many of these metals possess magnetically ordered structures over certain temperature ranges. As a result of the magnetic ordering a large magnetic field arises within the metal and causes an energy separation to appear between the spin-up and spin-down bands so that in the magnetically ordered phase there are quite different Fermi surfaces for the spin-up and spin-down electrons.

In part I we saw that for the simple metals there has now been a certain amount of work done on using the known Fermi surfaces in the explanation of many properties of a metal that depend only indirectly on the details of the electronic band structure and the shape of the Fermi surface. For most of the d-block and f-block metals Fermiology is still one stage less advanced than for the simple metals and it is still concerned with trying to determine accurately the shapes of their Fermi surfaces.