Structural, magnetic and transport properties of Co$_2$CrAl epitaxial thin films

TL;DR

This study investigates the structural, magnetic, and transport properties of epitaxial Co$_2$CrAl thin films grown on MgO substrates, revealing their ferromagnetic and semiconducting behavior with potential spintronic applications.

Contribution

The paper presents the first detailed analysis of epitaxial Co$_2$CrAl thin films' properties, including their growth, magnetic behavior, and transport characteristics, using pulsed laser deposition.

Findings

Films exhibit single-phase B2 structure with epitaxial growth.

Ferromagnetic behavior confirmed with saturation magnetization of 2.1 μB/f.u. at 5K.

Resistivity shows semiconducting behavior with negative temperature coefficient.

Abstract

We report the physical properties of Co$_2$CrAl Heusler alloy epitaxial thin films grown on single crystalline MgO(001) substrate using pulsed laser deposition technique. The x-ray diffraction pattern in $\theta$-2$\theta$ mode showed the film growth in single phase B2-type ordered cubic structure with the presence of (002) and (004) peaks, and the film oriented along the MgO(001) direction. The $\phi$~scan along the (220) plane confirms the four-fold symmetry and the epitaxial growth relation found to be Co$_2$CrAl(001)[100]$\vert$$\vert$MgO(001)[110]. The thickness of about 12~nm is extracted through the analysis of x-ray reflectivity data. The isothermal magnetization (M--H) curves confirm the ferromagnetic (FM) nature of the thin film having significant hysteresis at 5 and 300~K. From the in-plane M--H curves, the saturation magnetization values are determined to be 2.1~$\mu$$_{\rm B}$/f.u.~at 5~K and 1.6~$\mu$$_{\rm B}$/f.u. at 300~K, which suggests the soft FM behavior in the film having the coercive field $\approx$ 522~Oe at 5~K. The thermo-magnetization measurements at 500~Oe magnetic field show the bifurcation between field-cooled and zero-field-cooled curves below about 100~K. The normalized field-cooled magnetization curve follows the T$^2$ dependency, and the analysis reveal the Curie temperature around 335$\pm$11~K. Moreover, the low-temperature resistivity indicates semiconducting behavior with the temperature, and we find a negative temperature coefficient of resistivity (5.2 $\times$ 10$^{-4}$ /K).