Structural and magnetic characterization of Fe2CrSi Heusler alloy nanoparticles as spin injectors and spin based sensors.

Half-metallic ferromagnetic [HMF] nanoparticles are of considerable interest in spintronics applications due to their potential use as a highly spin polarized current source. HMF exhibits a semiconductor in one spin band at the Fermi level E_{<italic>f</italic>} and at the other spin band they poses strong metallic nature which shows 100 % spin polarization at E_{<italic>f</italic>}. Fe based full Heusler alloys are primary interest due to high Curie temperature. Fe₂CrSi Heusler alloys are synthesized using metallic powders of Fe, Cr and Si by mechanical alloying method. X-Ray diffractions studies were performed to analyze the structural details of Fe₂CrSi nanoparticles with High resolution scanning electron microscope (HRSEM) studies for the morphological details of nanoparticles and magnetic properties were studied using Vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM). XRD Data analysis conforms the Heusler alloy phase showing the existence of L2₁ structure. Magnetic properties are measured for synthesized samples exhibiting a soft magnetic property possessing low coercivity (H_C = 60.5 Oe) and saturation magnetic moment of Fe₂CrSi is 3.16 µB, which is significantly higher than the ideal value of 2 µB from the Slater-Pauling rule due to room temperature measurement. The change in magnetic properties are half-metallic nature of Fe₂CrSi is due to the shift of the Fermi level with respect to the gap were can be used as spin sensors and spin injectors in magnetic random access memories and other spin dependent devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]