Faculty Publications
Document Type
Article
Publication Version
Published Version
Journal/Book/Conference Title
AIP Advances
Volume
14
Issue
1
First Page
1
Last Page
5
Abstract
Spin-gapless semiconductor (SGS) is a new class of material that has been studied recently for potential applications in spintronics. This material behaves as an insulator for one spin channel, and as a gapless semiconductor for the opposite spin. In this work, we present results of a computational study of two quaternary Heusler alloys, MnCrNbAl and MnCrTaAl that have been recently reported to exhibit spin-gapless semiconducting electronic structure. In particular, using density functional calculations we analyze the effect of external pressure on electronic and magnetic properties of these compounds. It is shown that while these two alloys exhibit nearly SGS behavior at optimal lattice constants and at negative pressure (expansion), they are half-metals at equilibrium, and magnetic semiconductors at larger lattice constant. At the same time, reduction of the unit cell volume has a detrimental effect on electronic properties of these materials, by modifying the exchange splitting of their electronic structure and ultimately destroying their half-metallic/semiconducting behavior. Thus, our results indicate that both MnCrNbAl and MnCrTaAl may be attractive for practical device applications in spin-based electronics, but a potential compression of the unit cell volume (e.g. in thin-film applications) should be avoided.
Department
Department of Physics
Original Publication Date
1-1-2024
Object Description
1 PDF File
DOI of published version
10.1063/9.0000641
Repository
UNI ScholarWorks, Rod Library, University of Northern Iowa
Copyright
©2024 The Authors. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Recommended Citation
Schmidt, Brandon; Shand, Paul M.; Kharel, Parashu; and Lukashev, Pavel V., "Pressure induced modification of electronic and magnetic properties of MnCrNbAl and MnCrTaAl" (2024). Faculty Publications. 5651.
https://scholarworks.uni.edu/facpub/5651
Comments
First published in AIP Advances, v14 i1(Jan 2024) published by AIP Publishing. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1063/9.0000641