BARC/PUB/2012/0142

 
 

Enhanced non-metallic behavior on the verge of magnetic instability in Fe2V1-xNbxAl Heusler alloys

 
     
 
Author(s)

Saha, R.; Srinivas, V.; Rao, T. V. C.; Banerjee, A.
(TPD)

Source

Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials, 2012. Vol. 324: pp. 1071-1079

ABSTRACT

Structural, magnetic and transport behavior of Nb substituted Fe2Val alloys have been investigated in the present work. From the detailed analysis of these data it is observed that Nb content promotes a lattice expansion in L21 super-structure of Fe2VAl. Magnetization data suggest that un-doped Fe2VAl exhibits cluster glass behavior with a bimodal distribution of super paramagnetic clusters at lower temperatures, developed possibly due to the cluster size distribution. However, in Nb-substituted alloys, cluster size reduces and cluster density increases, which further reduces coupling between the clusters, resulting in a state of increased magnetic disorder upto aplausible 20% substitution. Concurrently resistivity increase sat lower temperatures and shows a deviation from semiconductor like transport, which can be explained in terms of increasing spin dependent scattering and decreasing inter cluster interactionduetoiso-electronic-but-larger-sizedNbsubstitutionatVsite. Present experimental results corroborate well with the theoretical predictions made in the literature.

 
 
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