LAUSR

Heusler magnetic alloys offer a wide variety of electronic properties very promising for spintronics and magnonics. Some alloys exhibit a spin gap in their band structure at the Fermi energy, the so-called half-metal magnetic (HMM) behavior. This particular property leads to two very interesting properties for spintronics, i.e., fully polarized current together with ultra-low magnetic damping, two key points for spin-transfer-torque based devices. This Tutorial gives experimental details to grow and characterize Heusler Co2MnZ compounds in thin films (Z = Al, Si, Ga, Ge, Sn, Sb) by using molecular beam epitaxy in order to get the proper predicted electronic properties. A first part of this Tutorial is dedicated to control the stoichiometry as best as possible with some methods to test it. The chemical ordering within the lattice was examined by using electron diffraction during growth, regular x-ray diffraction, and scanning transmission electron microscopy. In particular, standard x-ray diffraction is carefully analyzed depending on the chemical ordering in the cubic cell and shown to be inefficient to distinguish several possible phases, on the contrary to electron microscopy. The electronic properties, i.e., magnetic moment, spin polarization, and magnetic damping were reviewed and discussed according to the stoichiometry of the films and also theoretical predictions. Polycrystalline films were also analyzed, and we show that the peculiar HMM properties are not destroyed, a good news for applications. A clear correlation between the spin polarization and the magnetic damping is experimentally demonstrated. At least, our study highlights the major role of stoichiometry on the expected properties.