Itinerant G-type antiferromagnetism in D0${}_3$-type V${}_3$Z (Z=Al, Ga, In) compounds: A first-principles study

Abstract

Heusler compounds are widely studied due to their variety of magnetic properties making them ideal candidates for spintronic and magnetoelectronic applications. V${}_3$Al in its metastable D0${}_3$-type Heusler structure is a prototype for a rare antiferromagnetic gapless behavior. We provide an extensive study on the electronic and magnetic properties of V${}_3$Al, V${}_3$Ga and V${}_3$In compounds based on state-of-the-art electronic structure calculations. We show that the ground state for all three is a G-type itinerant antiferromagnetic gapless semiconductor. The large antiferromagnetic exchange interactions lead to very high Néel temperatures, which are predicted to be around 1000 K. The coexistence of the gapless and antiferromagnetic behaviors in these compounds can be explained considering the simultaneous presence of three V atoms at the unit cell using arguments which have been employed for usual inverse Heusler compounds. We expect that our study on these compounds to enhance further the interest on them towards the optimization of their growth conditions and their eventual incorporation in devices.

Submitted to Physical Review B, 8 pages, 9 figures, 1 table

References in corpus (3)

• Role of the conduction electrons in mediating exchange interactions in Heusler alloys
• Magneto-transport properties of oriented Mn2CoAl films sputtered on thermally oxidized Si substrates
• Antiferromagnetic phase of the gapless semiconductor V3Al

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Design of L2_1-type antiferromagnetic semiconducting full-Heusler compounds: A first principles DFT+GW study
• Superconducting and Antiferromagnetic Properties of Dual-Phase V${}_3$Ga