Search for Half Metallicity in Heusler Alloy Fe2nial for Spintronic Application using Density Function Theory.

Abstract

Fast, durable, non-volatile and inexpensive data storage in electronic devices is greatly desired both for work and entertainment. Components that can provide these qualities continue to be developed by material scientists as companies continue to compete to produce devices possessing these qualities. Giant Magnetoresistance (GMR) and Tunnel Magnetoresistance (TMR) are properties that would greatly contribute to a device having these qualities. Half metals have attracted interest for their potential use in Metallic Tunneling Junctions (MTJ’s) fabrication, as well as spintronics due to their ability to provide full polarization of conduction electrons hence high GMR and TMR values. Heusler alloys, some of which exhibit half metallic character are intermetallic compounds which would be suitable in fabrication of MTJ’s with high GMR and TMR values. The electronic structure of Heusler alloy Fe2NiAl was investigated using first principle calculations of the density functional theory (DFT); the energy of exchange and correlation was treated by the generalized gradient approximation (GGA). Preliminary results point to the electronic structure of the alloy having a gap in the majority band, hence exhibiting desirable half metallic ferromagnetic character. This will contribute in design and fabrication of MTJ’s used in magnetic random access memory (MRAM) currently occupying a great deal of effort of material designers in spintronics technology.