Control of the first-order antiferromagnetic–ferrimagnetic phase transition in Cr-modified Mn2Sb thin films by energetic ion irradiation

Abstract

Thin films of Mn2−xCrxSb with x=0.06 were synthesized by solid-state reaction of the ion beam sputtered Mn/Cr/Mn/Sb multilayers on SiO2 substrates. The films were irradiated at room temperature with 10MeV iodine ions by using a tandem accelerator at JAEA-Takasaki. The temperature dependence of the magnetization measured at 10kOe apparently showed the antiferromagnetic-ferrimagnetic phase transition at around 200K for the unirradiated x=0.06 samples. After the samples were irradiated up to 1.0×1014ions/cm2, the transition temperature was apparently shifted toward a higher temperature side for about 12.8K. However, notable structural changes could not be found due to the ion irradiations. These results suggest that the energetic heavy ion irradiation for the magnetic thin films with a first-order phase transition significantly affects the phase transition temperature with the transferred energy by the ion irradiation process.