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Reshna Elsa Philip

Publications and source records attributed to Reshna Elsa Philip.

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Disorder mediated fully compensated ferrimagnetic spin-gapless semiconducting behaviour in Cr3Al Heusler alloy

Spin-gapless semiconductors (SGSs) that simultaneously host fully compensated ferrimagnetism are highly sought for energy-efficient and stray-field-free spintronic technologies, yet their realization in chemically disordered systems has remained elusive. Here, we demonstrate that the binary Heusler alloy Cr3Al despite adopting a fully A2-disordered structure exhibits a rare coexistence of SGS transport and a fully compensated ferrimagnetic (FCF) ground state. Single-crystalline and polycrystalline Cr3Al samples were synthesized, and comprehensive structural analyses using single crystal XRD, synchrotron powder XRD, and neutron powder diffraction reveal complete Cr/Al site mixing. Remarkably, this chemical disorder does not disrupt magnetic order; instead, magnetization, X-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD), and temperature-dependent neutron diffraction establish a robust compensated ferrimagnetic state with a vanishingly small ordered moment of 0.1(1) muB/f.u and a high Curie temperature of 773(2) K. Electrical and thermal transport measurements uncover clear SGS characteristics, including weak temperature-dependent conductivity, very low Seebeck coefficients, and electron-hole compensated transport. Hall measurements show unusual temperature-dependent carrier concentrations consistent with disorder-modified electronic states. First-principles calculations on an A2-disordered SQS structure reproduce the experimentally observed negligibly small magnetization (0.0072 muB/f.u) and reveal a vanishing spin-up band gap unambiguously supporting SGS behavior driven by chemical disorder. Our results identify Cr3Al as the first experimentally verified A2-disordered Heusler alloy exhibiting both fully compensated ferrimagnetism and spin-gapless semiconducting transport, positioning it as a robust and disorder-tolerant platform for next-generation, high-temperature spintronic devices.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci

Investigation of competing magnetic orders and the associated spin-phonon coupling effect in quasi-2D Cr1+xTe2 (x = 0.22) single crystal

Single crystals of quasi-2D chromium telluride system represented by Cr1+xTe2 (x = 0.22), which crystallizes in the trigonal structure with the c-axis as the growth direction, are synthesized by the flux method. The magnetization measurements revealed the coexistence and competition between ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic exchange interactions due to the presence of the intercalated Cr-layers. A series of diverse magnetic transitions is exhibited by the crystal. While cooling the crystal, it undergoes a paramagnetic to antiferromagnetic transition at 190 K, followed by a transition into a ferromagnetic state at around 160 K, and a spin-canting at a lower temperature of 75 K. A possible lack of inversion symmetry in the crystal structure, along with the observance of an unusual jump and loop opening in the isothermal magnetization suggests that the crystals Cr1+xTe2 (x = 0.22) may host skyrmions. Furthermore, concomitant to their magnetic transitions, anomalies were observed in the derived Breit-Wigner-Fano fit parameters obtained from the asymmetric temperature-dependent Raman spectra, evidencing a strong spin-phonon coupling effect, intrinsic to the grown crystals. A strong perpendicular magnetic anisotropy along with the robust spin-phonon coupling, makes the system a promising candidate for prospective spintronics applications.

cond-mat.str-el