Magnetic phase diagram of the austenitic Mn-rich Ni–Mn–(In, Sn) Heusler alloys

Abstract

Heusler compounds have been intensively studied owing to the important technological advancements that they provide in the fields of shape memory, thermomagnetic energy conversion and spintronics. Many of their intriguing properties are ultimately governed by their magnetic states and understanding and possibly tuning them is evidently of utmost importance. In this work we examine the alloys with density functional theory simulations and 55Mn nuclear magnetic resonance and combine these two methods to carefully describe their ground state magnetic order. In addition, we compare the results obtained with the conventional generalized gradient approximation with the ones collected using the strongly constrained and appropriately normed (SCAN) semilocal functional for exchange and correlation. Experimental results eventually allow to discriminate between two different scenarios identified by ab initio simulations.