Half-metallicity in the half-Heusler RbSrC, RbSrSi and RbSrGe compounds

Electronic structure and magnetic properties based on density functional theory (DFT) within the generalized gradient approximation (GGA) for RbSrX(X=C, Si, Ge) half-Heusler compounds have been performed using the full-potential linearized augmented plane wave (FP-LAPW+lo) method. The electronic band structures and density of states of three compounds show that the spin-down electrons have metallic, and the spin-up bands have a gap of 1.73, 1.61, and 1.23 eV for RbSrC, RbSrSi, and RbSrGe respectively, resulting in stable half-metallic ferromagnetic behavior with magnetic moments of 1 μ_B.