Numerical Investigation of the Stability and Spintronic Properties of Selected Quaternary Alloys

The use of electronic charge and spins (spintronics) has been proposed for much better data storage. This class of material is believed to have excellent capability for data integrity, low dynamic power consumption and high-density storage that showcases excellent protection against data loss. The spintronic and related properties have been investigated on four newly proposed quaternary alloys (NbRhGeCo, NbRhGeCr, NbRhGeFe and NbRhGeNi) through the first-principles calculation method of the Density Functional Theory (DFT). Specifically, the phonon frequencies, elastic stabilities, and the electronic structure were systematically studied in the full Heusler structure. The results predict that NbRhGeFe and NbRhGeCr are elastically and structurally stable. Both NbRhGeFe and NbRhGeCo are half-metals with ferromagnetic character, but NbRhGeCo is unfortunately elastically unstable. NbRhGeCr and NbRhGeNi are non-magnetic metallic alloys in their spin channels.  All the results predict NbRhGeFe to be the only suitable among all the four alloys for spintronic application.