Structural and magnetic properties of epitaxial films of CoIrMnAl equiatomic quaternary Heusler alloy designed from first-principles calculation

Abstract

MgO-barrier magnetic tunnel junctions with half-metallic Heusler alloy electrodes attracted much attentions for spintronics applications. However, a couples of issues related to materials still remain to be resolved for practical uses. Recently, quarterly equiatomic Heusler alloys attracted attentions as advanced Heusler alloys. CoIrMnZ (Z = Al, Si, Ga, and Ge) half-metallic Heusler alloys were designed and predicted to have moderate Curie temperatures and to be a lattice-matched with the MgO barrier, being advantageous to traditional Co2 Heusler alloys [T. Roy et al., J. Magn. Magn. Mater. 498, 166092 (2020)]. Here we experimentally investigated structure and magnetic properties for thin films of one of those alloys, CoIrMnAl with a sputtering deposition. We successfully obtained the films with the B2 chemical ordering even with no post-annealing process. The lattice constant for the films annealed at 500-600\(^\circ\)C approximates the predicted values. The magnetization at 10 K was near 500 kA/m and the Curie temperature was approximately 400 K were observed, which were about 70% of the values predicted for the fully ordered structure. The magnetic properties observed in those B2 ordered films were well explained by ferrimagnetism appeared in B2 ordered CoIrMnAl with full-swap disorders of Co-Ir and Mn-Al and almost full-swap disorder of Co-Mn, predicted from the first-principles calculations.