Epitaxial growth of Heusler alloy Co2MnSi/MgO heterostructures on Ge(001) substrates

We prepared Heusler alloy Co2MnSi/MgO heterostructures on single-crystal Ge(001) substrates through magnetron sputtering for Co2MnSi and electron beam evaporation for MgO as a promising candidate for future generation spin-based functional devices. Structural investigations showed that the Co2MnSi/MgO heterostructure was grown epitaxially on a Ge(001) substrate with extremely smooth and abrupt interfaces and showed the L2(1) structure for the Co2MnSi film. Furthermore, a sufficiently high saturation magnetization (mu(s)) value of 5.1 mu(B)/f.u. at 10 K, which is close to the theoretically predicted mu(s) of 5.0 mu(B)/f.u. for half-metallic Co2MnSi, was obtained for prepared Co2MnSi films. (C) 2011 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3605675]