Observation of magnetic cluster phase above Curie temperature in Fe2CrAl Heusler alloy

Abstract

We present a detailed magnetic critical behavior study of Fe2CrAl Heusler alloy, for the first time, with rigorous analysis of high precision magnetization data obtained over the critical temperature region. Our studies confirm that B2 type site-disordered in Fe2CrAl alloy exhibits long-range ferromagnetic order below a well defined Curie temperature (T=208K). Though the nature of this transition is found to be of second order, the estimated critical exponents β=0.42, γ=1.356 and δ=4.25, are in between the theoretically predicted values for three-dimensional Heisenberg and mean-field interaction models. However, it is noteworthy that the scaling relations are obeyed indicating renormalization of interactions around the Curie temperature (TC), where magnetization data collapse into two separate branches, above and below TC. This conclusively shows that calculated critical exponents as well as critical temperature are unambiguous and intrinsic to the system. However, magnetization vs temperature data shows another magnetic transition (at T=313K) above the Curie temperature. It is shown that the short range magnetic correlation exist even beyond TC with cluster moment ∼102μB. This is attributed to a site disorder which results in formation of Cr clusters with short range ferromagnetic order.