Mastering disorder in a first-order transition by ion irradiation

Abstract

The effect of ion bombardment on MnAs single crystalline thin films is studied. The role of elastic collisions between ions and atoms of the material is singled-out as the main process responsible for modifying the properties of the material. Thermal hysteresis suppression, and the loss of sharpness of the magneto-structural phase transition are studied as a function of different irradiation conditions. While the latter is shown to be associated with the ion induced disorder at the scale of the transition correlation length, the former is related to the coupling between disorder and the large-scale elastic field associated with the phase coexistence pattern.

References in corpus (10)

• Hysteresis and hierarchies: dynamics of disorder-driven first-order phase transformations
• Mastering hysteresis in magnetocaloric materials
• Giant and reversible extrinsic magnetocaloric effects in La0.7Ca0.3MnO3 films due to strain
• Colossal magnetic phase transition asymmetry in mesoscale FeRh stripes
• Electronic temperatures, densities and plasma X-ray emission of a 14.5 GHz Electron-Cyclotron Resonance Ion Source
• History dependence of directly observed magnetocaloric effects in (Mn, Fe)As
• Suppression of the thermal hysteresis in magnetocaloric MnAs thin film by highly charged ion bombardment
• Revealing nanoscale disorder in W/CoFeB/MgO ultra-thin films using domain wall motion
• Droplet formation near first-order phase transitions: A mechanism for heterogeneity and phase separation away from the coexistence curve
• Low energy Ne ion beam induced-modifications of magnetic properties in MnAs thin films