Structural and magnetic characterization of Fe2CrSi Heusler alloy nanoparticles as spin injectors and spin based sensors

Abstract

Half-metallic ferromagnetic [HMF] nanoparticles are of considerable interest in spintronics applications due to their potential use as a highly spin polarized current source. HMF exhibits a semiconductor in one spin band at the Fermi level Ef and at the other spin band they poses strong metallic nature which shows 100 % spin polarization at Ef. Fe based full Heusler alloys are primary interest due to high Curie temperature. Fe2CrSi Heusler alloys are synthesized using metallic powders of Fe, Cr and Si by mechanical alloying method. X-Ray diffractions studies were performed to analyze the structural details of Fe2CrSi nanoparticles with High resolution scanning electron microscope (HRSEM) studies for the morphological details of nanoparticles and magnetic properties were studied using Vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM). XRD Data analysis conforms the Heusler alloy phase showing the existence of L21 structure. Magnetic properties are measured for synthesized samples exhibiting a soft magnetic property possessing low coercivity (HC = 60.5 Oe) and saturation magnetic moment of Fe2CrSi is 3.16 µB, which is significantly higher than the ideal value of 2 µB from the Slater-Pauling rule due to room temperature measurement. The change in magnetic properties are half-metallic nature of Fe2CrSi is due to the shift of the Fermi level with respect to the gap were can be used as spin sensors and spin injectors in magnetic random access memories and other spin dependent devices.