Epitaxial growth of Heusler alloy Co_2MnSi/MgO heterostructures on Ge(001) substrates

摘要

We prepared Heusler alloy Co_2MnSi/MgO heterostructures on single-crystal Ge(001) substrates through magnetron sputtering for Co_2MnSi and electron beam evaporation for MgO as a promising candidate for future generation spin-based functional devices. Structural investigations showed that the Co_2MnSi/MgO heterostructure was grown epitaxially on a Ge(001) substrate with extremely smooth and abrupt interfaces and showed the L2_1 structure for the Co_2MnSi film. Furthermore, a sufficiently high saturation magnetization (μ_s) value of 5.1 μ_B/f.u. at 10 K, which is close to the theoretically predicted μ_s of 5.0 μ_B/f.u. for half-metallic Co_2MnSi, was obtained for prepared Co_2MnSi films.