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Magnetic shape memory alloys are under intensive investigation due to their unusual physical properties, such as magnetic shape memory effect, magnetic field induced superelasticity, direct and inverse magnetocaloric effect etc., promising for novel applications. One of the intriguing properties of these materials in a single phase state is a giant magnetoresistance. Here we report the remarkable results about the magnetoresistive properties of epitaxial films of Ni52.3Mn26.8Ga20.9 magnetic shape memory alloy in the temperature range of 100–370 K, well below the martensitic transformation temperature. It was found that the formation of non-collinear magnetic structure due to a nanotwinning of the film results in electron scattering on such a structure and noticeable negative magnetoresistance in the entire investigated temperature range.

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In this work, a detailed report on the growth of elongated bar-like crystallites with a definite crystallographic orientation, forming a self-organized patterned surface layer, with a thickness of about 100 nm, onto 900 nm thick ferromagnetic shape memory alloy Ni-Mn-Ga films epitaxially grown on MgO(001) is presented. The phenomenon appears above a threshold of lattice mismatch (≈2%) between the film and substrate. The structural, magnetic and transformation properties of such films are described and analyzed. Particularly, the different magnetic states of the two film layers are discerned by ferromagnetic resonance. The feasibility of creating a ferromagnetic shape memory alloy with a nanoscale self-patterned surface, during the very same process of film deposition, can be interesting for potential applications where control of the surface architecture would be needed.

We report on the fabrication and in-situ characterization of temperature-dependent electrical resistance and deflection characteristics of free-standing NiMnGa/Si bimorph cantilevers with a NiMnGa layer thickness of 200 nm and a minimum lateral width of 50 nm. The martensitic transformation in the initial NiMnGa/Si bimorph films and nanomachined NiMnGa/Si bimorph cantilevers proceeds in a wide temperature range with a hardly detectable temperature hysteresis width below 1 K. This remarkable behavior is ascribed to the internal stress in the bimorph system that exceeds the stress limit of the critical point terminating the stress-temperature phase diagram as it is known for ferromagnetic shape memory alloys. Temperature-dependent deflection characteristics reveal a competition between the bimorph effect and the shape memory effect, causing beam deflection in opposite directions. The observation of the shape memory effect strongly depends on the NiMnGa/Si thickness ratio, causing a maximum deflection change per beam length of 3% in agreement with finite element simulations.