Thin films and devices based on fully compensated half-metallic ferrimagnetic materials

2017 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 17H06513
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Research Activity Start-up
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Research Field: Applied materials
• Research Institution: Tohoku University
• Principal Investigator: Ouardi Siham 東北大学, 材料科学高等研究所, 助手 (40807591)
• Project Period (FY): 2017-08-25 – 2018-03-31
• Keywords: Spintronics / Heusler alloys / ferrimagnets

Outline of Final Research Achievements

One goal in this research project was to grow and extensively investigate the thin films of the new class of material: fully compensated half-metallic ferrimagnets Mn1.5FeV0.5Al. Final goal is to create novel magnetic tunnel junctions with this new material for advanced spintronic applications. We succeeded, for the first time, to grow epitaxial single-crystalline Mn1.5FeV0.5Al thin films with highly L21-ordered Heusler structure prepared using an ultrahigh vacuum magnetron sputtering system. The film exhibited a Neel P-type ferrimagnetic character in AHE, where the magnetic moment of the antiparallel aligned sublattices is always larger in one direction than in the opposite one and no compensation points were obtained. A negative anisotropic magnetoresistance (AMR) ratio was observed. This negative sign of AMR proved the half-metallicity of the films. The result demonstrated that the material films were very promising for advanced spintrnoic applications.

Free Research Field

Spintronics