First-principles investigations of the half-metallic ferromagnetic LaCoTiIn equiatomic quaternary Heusler alloy for spintronics

We have evaluated the structural and mechanical stability, electronic structure, total spin magnetic moment, and Curie temperature of LaCoTiIn Equiatomic Quaternary Heusler Alloy (EQHA) using first-principles studies. The Generalized Gradient Approximation (GGA) and GGA+U schemes have been used as exchange-correlation functional for the above calculations. From the ground state calculation, LaCoTiIn EQHA with a Type-III structure in the ferromagnetic (FM) state is found to be stable. The electronic structure of LaCoTiIn EQHA depicts half-metallic behavior which has metallic overlap in the spin up (up arrow) channel and a semiconductor band gap in the other channel. The spin-orbit coupling of LaCoTiIn has a great influence on the band gap of the material. The computed band gap values for the spin down (down arrow) channel are 0.480 eV and 0.606 eV by using the GGA and GGA+U schemes. The total spin magnetic moment is 1 mu(B), according to the Slater-Pauling rule, M-Tot = (Z(Tot) - 18) mu(B). These results obtained can be used as a valuable reference for future research, or they will be used to further motivate the experimental synthesis of the corresponding alloy.