Ce Mn Ni 4 : A soft ferromagnet with a high degree of transport spin polarization

Abstract

In this letter we introduce a soft ferromagnetic compound, i.e., CeMnNi4, which exhibits a large moment (∼4.95μB∕Mn) and high degree of spin polarization. The system has a ferromagnetic transition temperature of 140K. Isothermal magnetization measurements at 5K reveal that the material is a soft ferromagnet with a magnetization saturating at about 1500Oe and a coercive field of <5Oe. We determine the transport spin polarization of this material from point contact Andreev reflection measurements to be 66% thereby making this material potentially important for spintronic applications.