Doping of MnVAl and MnVSi Heusler alloys as a route to half-metallic antiferromagnetism
arXiv:cond-mat/0701611
Abstract
Half-metallic antiferromagnets are the ideal materials for spintronic applications since their zero magnetization leads to lower stray fields and thus tiny energy losses. Starting from the MnVAl and MnVSi alloys we substitute Co or Fe for Mn and we show by means of first-principle electronic structure calculations that the resulting compounds are ferrimagnets. When the total number of valence electrons reaches the magic number of 24 the Fe-doped compounds are semi-metals and thus non-magnetic while the Co-doped ones show the desirable half-metallic antiferromagnetic character. The compounds are very likely to be synthesized experimentally since the parent compounds, MnVAl and CoVAl, have been already grown in the Heusler lattice structure.