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Abstract:
The Curie temperatures for the Heusler compounds Co2TiAl, Co2VGa,
Co2VSn, Co2CrGa, Co2CrAl, Co2MnAl, Co2MnSn, Co2MnSi, and Co2FeSi are
determined ab initio from the electronic structure obtained with the
local-density functional approximation and/or the generalized gradient
approximation. Frozen spin spirals are used to model the excited states
needed to evaluate the spherical approximation for the Curie
temperature. The spherical approximation is found to describe the
experimental Curie temperatures very well which, for the compounds
selected, extend over the range from 95 to 1100 K; as a function of the
valence electron count, they show an approximately linear trend which
finds an explanation by our calculations.
