Introduction to half-metallic Heusler alloys: Electronic Structure and Magnetic Properties

By I. Galanakis, P. Mavropoulos, P. Dederichs. 2005

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Intermetallic Heusler alloys are amongst the most attractive half-metallic systems due to the high Curie temperatures and the structural similarity to the binary semiconductors. In this review we present an overview of the basic electronic and magnetic properties of both Heusler families: the so-called half-Heusler alloys like NiMnSb and the the full-Heusler alloys like Co2MnGe. Ab-initio results suggest that both the electronic and magnetic properties in these compounds are intrinsically related to the appearance of the minority-spin gap. The total spin magnetic moment Mt scales linearly with the number of the valence electrons Zt, such that Mt = Zt − 24 for the full-Heusler and Mt = Zt − 18 for the half-Heusler alloys, thus opening the way to engineer new half-metallic alloys with the desired magnetic properties.

Subfields: Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials, Materials Chemistry, Mechanical Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/67ad473d72c4b0222e0266bdd2252a012cbadcd3