The peculiarities of local structure of YbNi2 and YbCo2 intermetallics synthesized at high pressure.

Local structure of YbCo2 and YbNi2 was investigated by EXAFS and XANES spectroscopy. It was found that the bond Yb-Co(Ni) has the highest static disorder and its length increases with temperature decrease, while all other bonds remain almost unchanged. This phenomenon may be caused by short-range magnetic ordering at temperatures above the phase transition. XANES measurements above ZIII-Yb absorption edge in YbCo2 and YbNi2 revealed that both compounds have almost the same density of free 5d-states