Half-metallic Ni2MnSn Heusler alloy prepared by rapid quenching

We have employed melt spinning method to produce Ni2MnSn-based hall metallic Heusler alloy. It allows fast and simple production of large amount of materials in a single production step avoiding high temperature post production annealing. Microstructural, magnetic and spin polarization study of Ni2MnSn ribbon is used for characterization. SEM analysis reveals the polycrystalline structure with the columnar crystals grown perpendicularly to the ribbon plane. A single-phase austenite with L2(1) structure was confirmed by X-ray. Magnetic measurements shows the ordinary ferromagnetic behavior with Curie temperature 344 K and magnetic moment 4.08 mu(B)/f.u. Particular crystal structure leads to the well defined anisotropy having an easy plane in the ribbon's plane. Finally, the spin polarization parameter P-0 estimated by Point Contact Anclreev-reflection Spectroscopy is varying in the range 40-70% for Ni2MnSn which is comparable with other values reported earlier for other Heusler alloys. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.