Journal
JOURNAL OF ALLOYS AND COMPOUNDS
Volume 895, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
ELSEVIER SCIENCE SA
DOI: 10.1016/j.jallcom.2021.162625
Keywords
Heusler alloys; Spintronics; Atomic disorder
Categories
Funding
- National Science Foundation (NSF) via DMR [2003828, 2003856]
- EPSCoR
- National Science Foundation [ACI-1548562]
- Scientific Data and Computing Center, a component of the Computational Science Initiative, at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) [DE-SC0012704]
- Dean's Office, School of Arts and Sciences
- Undergraduate Research Office, the State University of New York (SUNY), Buffalo State
- Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC) [TG-DMR180059]
- Direct For Mathematical & Physical Scien
- Division Of Materials Research [2003856, 2003828] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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This study investigates the effect of atomic disorder on the properties of Ti2MnAl Heusler alloy. Different types of disorder have varying impacts on the spin-polarization and magnetism of the alloy. A2 and B2 disorder types in the inverted cubic phase show higher spin-polarization, while D0(3) disorder has a smaller effect.
We report the combined computational and experimental study on the effect of atomic disorder on electronic, magnetic, and electron-transport properties of Ti2MnAl Heusler alloy. Ti2MnAl is predicted to exhibit spin-gapless semiconducting behavior in the inverted cubic crystal structure, while the regular cubic structure is essentially non-spin-polarized and non-magnetic. Here, we analyze three types of atomic disorder, namely, A2, B2, and D0(3), which are commonly observed in Heusler alloys. Our first-principles calculations indicate that all three types of disorder have a relatively small effect on a non-spin-polarized nature of Ti2MnAl in the regular cubic crystal (prototype Cu2MnAl) structure. At the same time, the inverted cubic phase (prototype Hg2TiCu) retains a significant degree of spin-polarization in A2 and B2 disordered structures. In particular, A2 and B2 types of disorder of the inverted cubic phase result in a spin-polarization of about 50% and 74%, respectively. The D0(3) disordered inverted phase has a significantly smaller spin-polarization of less than 10%. All considered structures align ferrimagnetically, except the B2-disordered and non-disordered regular cubic phases, which are non-magnetic. Our experimental results are consistent with the predicted properties of Ti2MnAl with partial A2 and B2 disorder types. While atomic disorder in a considered system should be minimized or avoided for practical implementations, its type may play a decisive role for potential applications in spin-based electronics. (C) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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