Compounds of Fe, Ti and Sb were prepared using arc melting and vacuum annealing. Fe2TiSb, expected to be a full Heusler compound crystallizing in the L21 structure, was shown by XRD and SEM analyses to be composed of weakly magnetic grains of nominal composition Fe1.5TiSb with iron-rich precipitates in the grain boundaries. FeTiSb, a composition consistent with the formation of a half Heusler compound, also decomposed into Fe1.5TiSb grains with Ti-Sb rich precipitates and was weakly magnetic. The dominant Fe1.5TiSb phase appears to crystallize in a defective L21-like structure with iron vacancies. Based on this finding, a first-principles DFT-based binary cluster expansion of Fe and vacancies on the Fe sublattice of the L21 structure was performed. Using the cluster expansion, we computationally scanned > 10 3 configurations and predict a novel, stable, non-magnetic semiconductor phase to be the zero-temperature ground state. This new structure is an ordered arrangement of Fe and vacancies, belonging to the space group R3m, with composition Fe1.5TiSb, i.e., between the full-and half-Heusler compositions. This phase can be visualized as alternate layers of L21 phase Fe2TiSb and C1 b phase FeTiSb, with layering along the [111] direction of the original cubic phases. Our experimental results on annealed samples support this predicted ground state composition, but further work is required to confirm that the R3m structure is the ground state.
We show that when two Heusler alloys are layered in the [001], [110], or [111] directions for various thicknesses to form a superlattice, the Slater-Pauling rule may still be satisfied and the resulting superlattice is often half-metallic with gaps comparable to or larger than those of its constituents. In addition, uniaxial magnetocrystalline anisotropy is induced because of the differences in the electronic structure of the two Heuslers in the superlattice. Various full-full, full-half, and half-half Heusler superlattices are studied, and potential half-metallic superlattices with perpendicular magnetocrystalline anisotropy are identified.
Various full Heusler alloys are interfaced with MgO and the magnetic properties of the Heusler-MgO junctions are studied. Next to MgO, the cubic Heusler system distorts to a tetragonal one, thereby inducing an anisotropy. The half-metallicity and nature of anisotropy (in-plane or perpendicular) in the Heusler-MgO system is governed mostly by the interface Heusler layers. There is a trend that Mn-O bonding near the MgO-Heusler junction results in perpendicular anisotropy. The ability to remain half-metallic and have perpendicular anisotropy makes some of these alloys potential candidates as free-layers in Spin Transfer Torque Random Access Memory (STT-RAM) devices, particularly, Cr2MnAs-MgO system with MnAs interface layers and Co2MnSi-MgO system with Mn2 interface layers.
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