School of Physics, AMBER and CRANN Institute, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland.
Center for Materials Genomics, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA.
Sci Adv. 2017 Apr 14;3(4):e1602241. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.1602241. eCollection 2017 Apr.
Magnetic materials underpin modern technologies, ranging from data storage to energy conversion to contactless sensing. However, the development of a new high-performance magnet is a long and often unpredictable process, and only about two dozen magnets are featured in mainstream applications. We describe a systematic pathway to the design of novel magnetic materials, which demonstrates a high throughput and discovery speed. On the basis of an extensive electronic structure library of Heusler alloys containing 236,115 prototypical compounds, we filtered those displaying magnetic order and established whether they can be fabricated at thermodynamic equilibrium. Specifically, we carried out a full stability analysis of intermetallic Heusler alloys made only of transition metals. Among the possible 36,540 prototypes, 248 were thermodynamically stable but only 20 were magnetic. The magnetic ordering temperature, , was estimated by a regression calibrated on the experimental of about 60 known compounds. As a final validation, we attempted the synthesis of a few of the predicted compounds and produced two new magnets: CoMnTi, which displays a remarkably high in perfect agreement with the predictions, and MnPtPd, which is an antiferromagnet. Our work paves the way for large-scale design of novel magnetic materials at potentially high speed.
磁性材料是现代技术的基础,从数据存储到能量转换再到非接触式感应,无所不包。然而,开发一种新型高性能磁铁是一个漫长且常常不可预测的过程,目前只有大约二十几种磁铁应用于主流领域。我们描述了一种设计新型磁性材料的系统方法,这种方法具有高通量和快速发现的特点。基于包含 236,115 种原型化合物的 Heusler 合金的广泛电子结构库,我们筛选出显示出磁有序性的化合物,并确定它们是否可以在热力学平衡条件下合成。具体来说,我们对仅由过渡金属组成的金属间 Heusler 合金进行了全面的稳定性分析。在可能的 36,540 种原型中,有 248 种是热力学稳定的,但只有 20 种是磁性的。通过对大约 60 种已知化合物的实验 进行校准的回归,我们估计了磁有序温度 。作为最后的验证,我们尝试了一些预测化合物的合成,并制备了两种新型磁铁:CoMnTi,其 非常高,与预测结果完全一致,以及 MnPtPd,它是一种反铁磁体。我们的工作为新型磁性材料的大规模设计铺平了道路,并且有可能实现高速设计。