Electronic Properties of Mn-Compounds Under Strain

TL;DR

This paper investigates how strain affects the electronic and magnetic properties of MnAs, providing insights relevant for spintronic device applications through first-principles calculations.

Contribution

It offers a detailed analysis of strain effects on MnAs's structural, electronic, and magnetic properties, including linear and nonlinear behaviors under different stress conditions.

Findings

Strain causes linear changes in structural and electronic properties within accessible measurement ranges.

Uniaxial stress induces significant nonlinear effects on electronic and magnetic characteristics.

Results are relevant for designing spintronic devices with strained MnAs layers.

Abstract

We study the physical properties of MnAs under strain by using accurate first-principles pseudopotential calculations. Our results provide new insight on the physics of strained multilayer that are grown epitaxially on different lattice mismatched substrates and which are presently of interest for spintronic applications. We compute the strain dependence of the structural parameters, electronic bands, density of states and magnetization. In the region of strain/stress that is easily directly accessible to measurements, the effects on these physical quantities are linear. We also address the case of uniaxial stress inducing sizeable and strongly non linear effects on electronic and magnetic properties.