Study of ferromagnetic instability in τ-MnAl, using first-principles

The tau- phase of the binary Mn-Al system is a promising rare-earth free permanent magnet. However, the experimentally determined figure-of-merit (energy-factor) is significantly lower than the theoretical estimate. This is partly being associated with the low volume fraction of tau-MnAl during synthesis, chemical disorder driven inter-sublattice antiferromagnetism, and presence of multiple binary phases. In this work, with the help of first-principles linear response calculations, we show that the presumed long range ferromagnetic ordering in tau-MnAl is unstable. Calculation of Mn magnetic pair-exchange interaction for tau-MnAl show competing ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic interactions. As a result, the study infers to a non-collinear magnetic ground state, which then partly explains the low magnetization as observed in experiments. Local probe experiments such as neutron diffraction, corroborating our prediction of the non-collinear state in tau-MnAl is therefore desired. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.