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The elastic, magnetoelastic, and phonon properties of Ni2FeGa were investigated through first-principles calculations. The obtained elastic and phonon dispersion curves for the austenite and martensite phases agree well with available theoretical and experimental results. The isotropic elastic moduli are also predicted along with the polycrystalline aggregate properties including the bulk modulus, shear modulus, Young’s modulus, and Poisson’s ratio. The Pugh ratio indicates that Ni2FeGa shows ductility, especially the austenite phase, which is consistent with the experimental results. The Debye temperatures of the Ni2FeGa in the austenite and martensite phases are 344 K and 392 K, respectively. It is predicted that the magnetoelastic coefficient is −5.3 × 106 J/m3 and magnetostriction coefficient is between 135 and 55 ppm in the Ni2FeGa austenite phase.
Ferromagnetic shape memory alloys (FSMAs) such as Ni2MnGa have received continuous attention from a technological perspective as smart materials for application in sensors and actuators.[1,2] Ni2MnGa shows magnetic-field-induced strains (MFISs) up to 12% by the rearrangement of twin variants in the non-modulated (NM) martensitic phase.[3] However, the application of Ni2MnGa alloys is restricted by their brittleness and low transition temperatures. Recently, Ni2FeGa alloys have emerged as an alternative to Ni2MnGa alloys owing to their better ductility.[4] This alloy exhibits a Curie temperature of 430 K and a martensitic transformation temperature of 142 K. Different martensitic phases such as the modulated 5M, 6M, and 7M phases would be formed during the phase transition upon cooling.[5,6] The MFISs of the Ni2FeGa alloys are approximately 0.02%–0.3% in modulated martensite,[7,8] and an MFIS of about 2% has been achieved in the non-layered L10 martensite of the Ni–Fe–Ga–Co alloys since the extra Co atoms improve the magnetic anisotropy constant, Curie temperature, and transformation temperature of the compounds.[4] The microstructural features and structural phase transition in the Ni2FeGa and Ni–Fe–Ga–Co alloys have been systematically investigated by means of transmission electron microscopy.[9,10] Recently, Liu et al.[11,12] reported that the Ni–Fe–Ga alloys have become one of the potential candidates for solid-state mechanical cooling applications because they show large reversible elastocaloric effects.
Theoretical investigations based on density functional theory prove to be a powerful tool; for instance, to predict the structural, elastic, electronic, and thermodynamic properties of materials such as NB2,[13] cubic-NbH2 hydride,[14] sulfur-doped GaSe,[15] and CdSe1−xTex.[16] Several ab initio investigations have been carried out on the structural, electronic, elastic, and magnetic properties of stoichiometric[17–19] and off-stoichiometric[20,21] Ni2FeGa alloys in the austenite and martensite phases. Moreover, several theoretical studies aiming to understand the origin of the martensitic phase transformation have closely correlated the phonon anomaly in the austenite phase with Fermi surface nesting and electron–phonon coupling.[22,23] However, only a few theoretical studies have been conducted to date on the isotropic elastic moduli, Debye temperatures, and magnetoelastic properties of the Ni2FeGa alloys. Studying the isotropic elastic moduli is very important because the mechanical and thermodynamic properties can be obtained by calculating the elastic constants.[24] Furthermore, phase-field simulations have been used to simulate the formation and evolution of magnetoelastic domains under combined mechanical and magnetic loading,[25] the stress–strain behaviors, and the magnetic-field-induced strain behaviors[26] of the Ni2MnGa alloys. The magnetoelastic coefficient is an important parameter for establishing the thermodynamic potential in phase-field simulations, and it is usually obtained by fitting the experimental measurements.[26,27] Therefore, it is meaningful for multi-scale simulations that the first-principles calculations provide the parameters such as the magnetoelastic coefficients for the phase-field simulations to build a model of the thermodynamic potential.[28] The purpose of the present work is to provide a first-principles-based description of the magnetoelastic coupling in ferromagnetic shape memory alloys, which can be used as a basis for further studies of this important class of materials. In this work, we present the investigations of the isotropic elastic moduli and the magnetoelastic properties of stoichiometric Ni2FeGa alloys through ab initio calculations. We approach this investigation by modeling the austenite as a 16-atom L21 supercell. The phonon dispersions of the austenite and martensite structures were also calculated.
The calculations were performed using the Vienna ab initio simulation package[29,30] (VASP) based on density functional theory. The electronic exchange and correlation were described within a spin-polarized generalized-gradient approximation (GGA), using the function proposed by Perdew, Burke, and Ernzerhof (PBE).[31,32] The Brillouin zone (BZ) was sampled with a special 11 × 11 × 11 k-point mesh arranged in a Monkhorst–Pack scheme,[33] and the energy cutoff was set at 470 eV. The electron–ion interaction was as described in the projector augmented-wave (PAW) formalism, and Ni (3d84s2), Fe (3d74s1), and Ga (3d104s24p1) were treated as the valance states. For the calculation of the magnetocrystalline anisotropy energy, the spin–orbit coupling effect was considered, and the symmetry was switched off. The full self-consistent calculation of the spin–orbital interaction have been previously performed in the non-collinear model implemented by Hobbs et al.[34] and Marsman and Hafner[35] in the VASP.
The phonon calculations were performed using the finite displacement approaches with the phonopy[36,37] code. The Hellmann–Feynman forces were calculated using the VASP code and by applying Methfessel–Paxton smearing with a smearing parameter of σ = 0.1 eV to a 4 × 4 × 4 k-point grid. The 2 × 2 × 2 supercell for the austenite phase was generated by repeating the conventional unit cell (Fig.
Figure
First, the three independent elastic constants for the cubic phase and the six for the NM martensitic phase were calculated by the strain–stress method.[39] The stress calculations were conducted with 2 and 4 independent sets of strains for the cubic and NM tetragonal phases, respectively. The calculated results are listed in Table
The isotropic moduli such as the bulk modulus, B, shear modulus, G, Young’s modulus, E, and the Poisson and Pugh ratios were obtained using the Voigt[41]–Reuss[42]–Hill[43] relations for polycrystalline materials. In calculating the moduli G and B, Voigt[41] assumed that homogeneous strain was maintained throughout the stressed samples. Reuss,[42] on the other hand, believed that homogeneous stress was maintained in all directions throughout the stressed samples. However, Hill[43] later proposed that the true values of the moduli should be given by the average of the Voigt and Reuss values. For simplicity, we only considered the tetragonal crystal structure. The bulk modulus calculated by the Voigt approximation is given by
The shear modulus calculated by the Voigt approximation is given by
The bulk modulus calculated by the Reuss approximation is given by
The shear modulus calculated by the Reuss approximation is given by
The Young’s modulus, E, and Poisson’s ratio, v, for an isotropic material are given by
The important moduli for applications, i.e., the bulk and shear moduli, are calculated and are listed in Table
According to the Pugh criteria,[44] a B/G ratio of 1.75 separates ductile and brittle materials; that is, ductile fcc metals all have a high B/G, whereas brittle bcc metals all have a low B/G.[45] All the phases we calculated were ductile since their Pugh ratio, B/G > 1.75. In Table
The Debye temperature is an important fundamental parameter correlated to the physical properties of materials, such as the specific heat capacity and melting point. We calculated the Debye temperatures of Ni2FeGa in the austenite and martensite phases from the average sound velocity, vm, using the following relation and assuming a constant sound velocity. The Debye temperature is given by[46,47]
For small distortions in the cubic crystal lattice, the magnetoelastic energy, K(ε),[48] is related to the uniaxial magnetocrystalline anisotropy energy (MAE) of the cubic structure. In the present work, the MAE is defined as K = E110 − E001, where E110 and E001 are the total energies when the magnetization is in the [110] and [001] directions of the cubic phase, respectively.
The total energy can be written as the sum of the elastic and magnetoelastic energies, Eel and Eme, respectively, which are assumed to be quadratic,[49]
The magnetoelastic coupling coefficients, B1, of the Ni2MnGa and Ni2FeGa alloys are determined from the slopes of the lines in the MAE versus ε plot in Fig.
The phonon dispersion curves and the total vibrational densities of states (VDOSs) calculated using GGA for the cubic and NM phases of Ni2FeGa are shown in Figs.
In this work, the elastic, magnetoelastic, and phonon properties of the Ni2FeGa system were investigated and compared to the available theoretical and experimental data. By fitting the total energy as a function of the volume with the Birch–Murnaghan EoS, the bulk modulus and the equilibrium lattice parameter are obtained. The bulk modulus (B), shear modulus (G), Young’s modulus (E), and Poisson’s ratio (ν) of the Ni2FeGa are determined using the Voigt–Reuss–Hill approach, and the results were in good agreement with previous calculations. The Debye temperatures of the Ni2FeGa in the austenite and martensite phases were 344 and 392 K, respectively. The magnetoelastic coefficient is −5.3 × 106 J/m3, and the magnetostriction coefficient of the Ni2FeGa austenite phase is between 135 and 55 ppm, as obtained by calculating the magnetocrystalline anisotropy energy—which can provide a helpful reference for further phase-field simulation work. The phonon dispersion curves and vibrational densities of states of the austenite and martensite phases were presented.
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