A pressure and magnetotransport study of binary quasicrystal YbCd5.7

We have probed the quasicrystalline state in binary YbCd5.7 by monitoring its electrical resistivity between 1.5 and 300 K in externally applied hydrostatic pressure up to 16 kbar and measuring its magnetoresistivity up to 12 T from 0.5 to 20 K. The thermal variation of the resistivity is practically unaffected by pressure, indicating the stability of the quasicrystalline state in this pressure regime. A positive magnetoresistance, Δρ/ρ, of ∼ 0.8% is observed at 0.65 K, which reduces to ∼ 0.4% at 20 K in the maximum applied field of 12 T. Though the magnetoresistance of the sample investigated is about an order of magnitude larger than expected on the basis of the empirically derived relationship Δρ/ρ ∼ ρ1.3 observed for a large number of quasicrystals, it is much below the unusually large anomalous magnetoresistance (20-200%) reported earlier in the literature. We believe that the intrinsic magnetoresistivity of YbCd5.7 in different samples may be primarily masked by the presence of traces of free Cd which is known to have a giant magnetoresistivity at low temperatures