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Abstract

We present measurements of the thermopower S(T) on CePd1-xRhx between 2 K and 300 K. For low Rh content, the system behaves as a ferromagnetic Kondo system with a Curie temperature T-C of about 6 K, a Kondo scale smaller than T-C, and an overall crystal electric field splitting of 210 K. As the Rh content increases T-C is suppressed, while the average Kondo scale gets larger. Simultaneously, the presence of different Ce environments leads to a broad distribution of local Kondo scales ranging from very small values to above 50 K. As a consequence, large thermopower values are observed over an extended temperature range. Close to the critical concentration we find power-law dependencies of S/T vs T down to 2 K. For a Rh content of x = 0.95 we may show explicitly that the thermopower contains contributions from Ce sites with different local energy scales.