First-principles study to probe the effect of substitution at X and Z sites on the electronic, magnetic and transport properties of Co2X(V, Nb, Ta)Z(Al, Ga, In, Si, Ge, Sn) Heusler alloys

In the present work, we have used density functional theory based electronic structure calculations to probe the role of isovalent substitution at X@(0.5, 0.5, 0.5) and Z@(0, 0, 0) site of Co2X(= Ta, Nb, V)Z(= Al, Ga, In). Further, we probed the role of electron-rich substitution at Z site on the electronic, magnetic and transport properties of half-metallic(HM) Co2TaZ( = Al,Ga,In) full Heusler alloys(FHA). One of our main aims is to study the effect of electron-rich substitution at Z site on the total and partial moments of X and Z sites. We have used the modified Becke–Johnson(mBJ) exchange–correlation term to calculate the HM band-gap. We observe that, isovalent substitution at X and Z sites provides a way to tune the lattice constant in range of ∼5.75 Å to ∼6.16 Å with sustained HM character. Further, it is noticed that the HM band-gap decreases with isovalent substitution (with low atomic number) at X site with maximum and minimum values of 1.09 eV and 0.5 eV, respectively. Isovalent substitution does not affect the total magnetic moment, however, it affects the atomic magnetic moment values. Further, we observe that 25% of substitution of tetravalent atoms (Si, Ge, Sn) at atomic site Z (having Al, Ga, In) enhances the total magnetic moment with a small decrease in the minority band-gap. However, 75 to 100 % of substitutions destroy the half-metallicity, showing an enhancement in the magnetic moment. Temperature dependent spin Seebeck coefficients corresponding to the 25% and 75% of substitution of tetravalent element at Z site exhibit values close to 150 μV/K and 25–75 μV/K, respectively, for temperatures above 400 K. Interestingly, electron rich substitution at Z cite, changes the orientation of the magnetic moment corresponding to the X (Ta) site element. In order to understand in detail the impact of substitution on the local magnetic moment of Co and X site atoms (V, Nb, Ta), we have performed calculations of respective X-ray magnetic circular dichroism(XMCD) spectra and analyzed the results in terms of unoccupied density of states. XMCD spectra of L2,3 edges of Co atom show only small deviation (in the intensity) with the changes in the X and Z sites. Unlike the case of Co atom, we find that the XMCD spectra of M2,3 edges of Ta atom exhibit substantial changes when tetravalent atoms replace the trivalent atoms at the Z site.