Co-based full Heusler alloys have been predicted to be half-metals, with 100% spin polarisation at the Fermi level, yet this has yet to be realised in practice. Heusler thin-films often exhibit a degree of atomic disorder, and this is believed to be one cause of the low magnetoresistance in Heusler-based spin valves' devices. We present an ab initio density functional theory + U investigation into the effect of disorder on the electronic properties of Co2Fe0.5Mn0.5Si. It is found that the half-metallicity depends strongly on the kind of disorder present, with low or even reversed spin-polarisation when the Co sublattice mixes with either the Fe/Mn or Si sublattice, but keeps the high spin polarisation when the Mn/Fe and Si sublattices are mixed. Calculations of the formation energy show that this latter kind of disorder is by far the most likely to occur, an encouraging result which means that it may not be necessary to produce perfectly ordered Heusler alloys in order to achieve 100% spin polarisation.
In this work we present a theoretical study of the effect of disorder on spin polarisation at the Fermi level, and the disorder formation energies for Co2FexMn1−xSi (CFMS) alloys. The electronic calculations are based on density functional theory with a Hubbard U term. Chemical disorders studied consist of swapping Co with Fe/Mn and Co with Si; in all cases we found these are detrimental for spin polarisation, i.e., the spin polarisation not only decreases in magnitude, but also can change sign depending on the particular disorder. Formation energy calculation shows that Co–Si disorder has higher energies of formation in CFMS compared to Co2MnSi and Co2FeSi, with maximum values occurring for x in the range 0.5–0.75. Cross-sectional structural studies of reference Co2MnSi, Co2Fe0.5Mn0.5Si, and Co2FeSi by Z-contrast scanning transmission electron microscopy are in qualitative agreement with total energy calculations of the disordered structures.
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