Single crystal growth from molten metal fluxes

Flux growth is the key technique to produce single crystalline intermetallic compounds of outstanding quality. With the choice of right flux one can grow single crystals of congruently as well as incongruently melting compounds. For instance Ce4Pt12Sn25 is a highly unstable phase, but promises to be an interesting candidate as a good thermoelectric material, with its cage like structure. In this talk, I shall discuss the procedure adopted to grow single crystals of Ce4Pt12Sn25 (and few other heavy fermion compounds) along
with some results on the physical properties.

In addition, high quality single crystals of PtSn4 were also obtained while attempting the crystal growth of Ce4Pt12Sn25. PtSn4, although a simple diamagnet, shows strong dependence of its bulk properties on the applied magnetic field and I shall discuss this aspect briefly.