# Structural and electronic properties of the spin-filter material CrVTiAl with disorder

## TL;DR

This study investigates how chemical disorder affects the structural, electronic, and spin-filter properties of CrVTiAl, combining experimental diffraction and resistivity measurements with first-principles calculations to understand its potential for spintronic applications.

## Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of the disorder effects on CrVTiAl's properties using both experimental and theoretical methods, revealing the stability of spin-filter characteristics despite disorder.

## Key findings

- Disordered phases are metallic, while the ordered phase retains spin-filter properties.
- Band gap confirmed by resistivity measurements.
- Hall coefficient decreases with temperature, indicating thermally activated carriers.

## Abstract

The effects of chemical disorder on the transport properties of the spin-filter material CrVTiAl are investigated experimentally and theoretically. Synchrotron X-ray diffraction experiments on bulk CrVTiAl and the associated Rietveld analysis indicate that the crystal structure consists primarily of a mixture of a partially ordered B2 phase, a fully disordered A2 phase and a small component of an ordered L2\textsubscript{1} or Y phase. High temperature resistivity measurements confirm the existence of a band gap. First-principles, all-electron, self-consistent electronic structure computations show that the chemically disordered A2 and B2 phases are metallic, while the spin-filter properties of the ideal Y-type phase are preserved in the presence of L2\textsubscript{1} disorder. The Hall coefficient is found to decrease with increasing temperature, similar to the measured increase in the conductivity, indicating the presence of thermally activated semiconductor-like carriers.