Unusual d-electron heavy-fermion behaviour in f-electron ferromagnetic antiperovskite Gd3SnC

Abstract Inverted structures of common crystal lattices, referred to as antistructures, are rare in nature due to their thermodynamic constraints imposed by the switched cation and anion positions in reference to the original structure. However, a stable antistructure formed with mixed bonding characters of constituent elements in unusual valence states can provide unexpected material properties. Here, we report a heavy-fermion behaviour of ferromagnetic gadolinium lattice in Gd3SnC antiperovskite, contradicting the common belief that ferromagnetic gadolinium cannot be a heavy-fermion system. The specific heat shows an unusually large Sommerfeld coefficient of ~ 1114 mJ⋅mol− 1⋅K− 2 with a logarithmic behaviour of non-Fermi-liquid state. We demonstrate that the heavy-fermion behaviour in the non-Fermi-liquid state appears to arise from the hybridized electronic states of gadolinium 5d-electrons participating in metallic Gd–Gd and covalent Gd–C bonds. These results accentuate unusual chemical bonds in CGd6 octahedra with the dual characters of gadolinium 5d-electrons for the emergence of heavy-fermions.