Predicting magnetization of ferromagnetic binary Fe alloys from chemical short range order

Abstract

Among the ferromagnetic binary alloys, body centered cubic (bcc) Fe-Co is the one showing the highest magnetization. It is known experimentally that ordered Fe-Co structures show a larger magnetization than the random solid solutions with the same Co content. In this work, based on density functional theory (DFT) studies, we aim at a quantitative prediction of this feature, and point out the role of the orbital magnetic moments. Then, we introduce a DFT-based analytical model correlating local magnetic moments and chemical compositions for Co concentrations ranging from 0 to 70 at.%. It is also extended to predict the global magnetization of both ordered and disordered structures at given concentration and chemical short range orders. The latter model is particularly useful for interpreting experimental data. Based on these models, we note that the local magnetic moment of a Fe atom is mainly dictated by the Co concentration in its first two neighbor shells. The detailed local arrangement of the Co atoms has a minor effect. These simple models can fully reproduce the difference in magnetization between the ordered and disordered Fe-Co alloys between 30% and 70% Co, in good agreement with experimental data. Finally, we show that a similar model can be established for another bcc binary Fe alloy, the Fe-Ni, also presenting ferromagnetic interactions between atoms.