Abstract
In recent years the intermetallic ternary RE
2
MgGe
2
(RE = rare earth) compounds attract interest in a variety of technological areas. We therefore investigate in the present work the structural, electronic, magnetic, and thermodynamic properties of Nd
2
MgGe
2
and Gd
2
MgGe
2
. Spin–orbit coupling is found to play an essential role in realizing the antiferromagnetic ground state observed in experiments. Both materials show metallicity and application of a Debye-Slater model demonstrates low thermal conductivity and little effects of the RE atom on the thermodynamic behavior.