14 research outputs found
Preparation and structural properties of thin films and multilayers of the Heusler compounds Cu2MnAl, Co2MnSn, Co2MnSi and Co2MnGe
We report on the preparation of thin films and multilayers of the
intermetallic Heusler compound CuMnAl, Co2MnSn, Co2MnSi and Co2MnGe by
rf-sputtering on MgO and Al2O3 substrates. Cu2MnAl can be grown epitaxially
with (100)-orientation on MgO (100) and in (110)-orientation on Al2O3 a-plane.
The Co based Heusler alloys need metallic seedlayers to induce high quality
textured growth. We also have prepared multilayers with smooth interfaces by
combining the Heusler compounds with Au and V. An analysis of the ferromagnetic
saturation magnetization of the films indicates that the Cu2MnAl-compound tends
to grow in the disordered B2-type structure whereas the Co-based Heusler alloy
thin films grow in the ordered L21 structure. All multilayers with thin layers
of the Heusler compounds exhibit a definitely reduced ferromagnetic
magnetization indicating substantial disorder and intermixing at the
interfaces.Comment: 21 pages, 8 figure
Slater-Pauling Behavior of the Half-Ferromagnetic Full-Heusler Alloys
Using the full-potential screened Korringa-Kohn-Rostoker method we study the
full-Heusler alloys based on Co, Fe, Rh and Ru. We show that many of these
compounds show a half-metallic behavior, however in contrast to the
half-Heusler alloys the energy gap in the minority band is extremely small.
These full-Heusler compounds show a Slater-Pauling behavior and the total
spin-magnetic moment per unit cell (M_t) scales with the total number of
valence electrons (Z_t) following the rule: M_t=Z_t-24. We explain why the
spin-down band contains exactly 12 electrons using arguments based on the group
theory and show that this rule holds also for compounds with less than 24
valence electrons. Finally we discuss the deviations from this rule and the
differences compared to the half-Heusler alloys.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures, revised figure 3, new text adde