No Arabic abstract
We have studied the effect of Fe addition on the structural and magnetic transitions in the magnetic shape memory alloy Ni-Mn-Ga by substituting systematically each atomic species by Fe. Calorimetric and AC susceptibility measurements have been carried out in order to study the magnetic and structural transformation properties. We find that the addition of Fe modifies the structural and magnetic transformation temperatures. Magnetic transition temperatures are displaced to higher values when Fe is substituted into Ni-Mn-Ga, while martensitic and premartensitic transformation temperatures shift to lower values. Moreover, it has been found that the electron per atom concentration essentially governs the phase stability in the quaternary system. However, the observed scaling of transition temperatures with $e/a$ differs from that reported in the related ternary system Ni-Mn-Ga.
The magnetocaloric effect (MCE) in paramagnetic materials has been widely used for attaining very low temperatures by applying a magnetic field isothermally and removing it adiabatically. The effect can be exploited also for room temperature refrigeration by using recently discovered giant MCE materials. In this letter, we report on an inverse situation in Ni-Mn-Sn alloys, whereby applying a magnetic field adiabatically, rather than removing it, causes the sample to cool. This has been known to occur in some intermetallic compounds, for which a moderate entropy increase can be induced when a field is applied, thus giving rise to an inverse magnetocaloric effect. However, the entropy change found for some ferromagnetic Ni-Mn-Sn alloys is just as large as that reported for giant MCE materials, but with opposite sign. The giant inverse MCE has its origin in a martensitic phase transformation that modifies the magnetic exchange interactions due to the change in the lattice parameters.
A series of first principles calculations have been carried out in order to discuss electronic structure, phonon dynamics, structural instabilities and the nature of martensitic transformations of the Heusler alloys Ni$_2$Mn(Ga, Ge, Al) and Co$_2$Mn(Ga, Ge). The calculations show that besides electronic pecularities like Fermi--surface nesting, hybridizing optical and acoustic phonon modes are important for the stabilization of the modulated martensitic structures.
A remarkable progress towards functional ferromagnetic semiconductor materials for spintronics has been achieved in p-type (Ga,Mn)As. Robust hole-mediated ferromagnetism has, however, been observed also in other III-V hosts such as antimonides, GaP or (Al,Ga)As which opens a wide area of possibilities for optimizing the host composition towards higher ferromagnetic Curie temperatures. Here we explore theoretically ferromagnetism and Mn incorporation in Ga(As,P) and (Al,Ga)As ternary hosts. While alloying (Ga,Mn)As with Al has only a small effect on the Curie temperature we predict a sizable enhancement of Curie temperatures in the smaller lattice constant Ga(As,P) hosts. Mn-doped Ga(As,P) is also favorable, as compared to (Al,Ga)As, with respect to the formation of carrier and moment compensating interstitial Mn impurities. In (Ga,Mn)(As,P) we find a marked decrease of the partial concentration of these detrimental impurities with increasing P content.
We report a systematic study on the magneto-structural transition in Mn-rich Fe-doped Mn-Fe-Ni-Sn(Sb/In) Heusler alloys by keeping the total valence electron concentration (e/a ratio) fixed. The martensitic transition (MT) temperature is found to shift by following a proportional relationship with the e/a ratio of the magnetic elements alone. The magnetic entropy change across MT for a selected sample (Mn49FeNi40Sn9In) has been estimated from three different measurement methods (isofield magnetization (M) vs temperature (T), isothermal M vs field (H) and heat capacity (HC) vs T). We observed that though the peak value of magnetic entropy change changes with the measurement methods, the broadened shape of the magnetic entropy change vs T curves and the corresponding cooling power (~140 Jkg-1) remains invariant. The equivalent adiabatic temperature change ~ -2.6 K has been obtained from indirect measurements of temperature change. Moreover, an exchange bias field ~ 783 Oe at 5 K and a magnetoresistance of -30% are also obtained in one of these materials.
Magnetic phase diagrams of the metamagnetic shape memory alloys Ni50-xCoxMn31.5Ga18.5 (x = 9 and 9.7) were produced from high-field magnetization measurements up to 56 T. For both compounds, magnetic field induced martensitic transformations are observed at various temperatures below 300 K. Hysteresis of the field-induced transformation shows unconventional temperature dependence: it decreases with decreasing temperature after showing a peak. Magnetic susceptibility measurement, microscopy, and X-ray diffraction data suggest a model incorporating the magnetic anisotropy and Zeeman energy in two variants, which qualitatively explains the thermal and the magnetic field history dependence of the hysteresis in these alloys.