Tailoring Magnetic Frustration in Strained Epitaxial FeRh Films

Abstract

We report on a strain-induced martensitic transformation, accompanied by a suppression of magnetic order in epitaxial films of chemically disordered FeRh. X-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy and electronic structure calculations reveal that the lowering of symmetry (from cubic to tetragonal) imposed by the epitaxial relation leads to a further, unexpected, tetragonal-to-orthorhombic transition, triggered by a band-Jahn-Teller-type lattice instability. The collapse of magnetic order is a direct consequence of this structural change, which upsets the subtle balance between ferromagnetic nearest-neighbor interactions arising from Fe-Rh hybridization and frustrated antiferromagnetic coupling among localized Fe moments at larger distances.

arXiv comment9 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in Physical Review B

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Cited by in corpus (5)

• Impact of lattice dynamics on the phase stability of metamagnetic FeRh: Bulk and thin films
• FeRh groundstate and martensitic transformation
• Magnetic response of FeRh to static and dynamic disorder
• Revealing the Hidden Structural Phases of FeRh
• Epitaxial strain adaption in chemically disordered FeRh thin films