The beryllides MBe13 (M = rare earths and actinides) crystallize in a
NaZn13-type cubic structure, which can be categorized as a cage-structured
compound. In this study, powder X-ray diffraction measurements have been
performed on LaBe13, SmBe13, and UBe13 in the temperature range between 7 and
300 K in order to investigate their crystallographic characteristics
systematically. They keep the NaZn13-type cubic structure down to the lowest
temperature. We estimated their Debye temperature to be 600 - 750 K from
analyses of the temperature dependence of a lattice parameter, being in good
agreement with the values reported previously. Rietveld refinements on the
obtained powder patterns revealed that the M atom in the 8a site is located in
an almost ideal snub cube formed by 24 Be atoms in the 96i site, whose caged
structure is unchanged even at the low temperatures. In addition, it is argued
from the temperature variation of an isotropic mean-square displacement
parameter that the MBe13 compounds commonly have a low-energy phonon mode,
which can be described by a model assuming an Einstein oscillation of the M
atom with a characteristic temperature of ~ 160 K.Comment: 8 pages with 6 figures and 2 table
