First-principles investigation of the effect of substitution and surface adsorption on the magnetostrictive performance of Fe-Ga alloys
Abstract
Materials with large magnetostriction are widely used in sensors, actuators, microelectromechanical systems, and energy harvesters. Binary Fe-Ga alloys (Galfenol) are the most promising rare-earth-free candidates combining numerous advantages such as low saturation magnetic field (∼200 Oe ) , excellent ductility, and low cost, while further improving their performance is imperative for practical applications. Using density functional theory calculation, we report the results of the effect of substituting small amounts of additional elements X (e.g., X =Ag or Cu) on magnetostriction of Fe-Ga alloys, and we find that it may double the magnetostriction with a substitutional percentage of only 1.6 % . Moreover, adsorbents with high chemical activity (e.g., O or Os atoms) may affect the surface energy of different face orientations of Fe-Ga alloys, indicating that proper surface treatments are necessary to tune the alignment of Fe-Ga grains to achieve better performance. These results may be helpful to further optimize the magnetostrictive properties of Fe-Ga alloys for device applications.
- Publication:
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Physical Review B
- Pub Date:
- May 2019
- DOI:
- 10.1103/PhysRevB.99.205125
- arXiv:
- arXiv:1810.04708
- Bibcode:
- 2019PhRvB..99t5125W
- Keywords:
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- Condensed Matter - Materials Science
- E-Print:
- Phys. Rev. B 99, 205125 (2019)