Atomic moments in Mn2CoAl thin films analyzed by X-ray magnetic circular dichroism.

Spin gapless semiconductors are known to be strongly affected by structural disorder when grown epitaxially as thin films. The magnetic properties of Mn₂CoAl thin films grown on GaAs (001) substrates are investigated here as a function of annealing. This study investigates the atomicspecific magnetic moments of Mn and Co atoms measured through X-ray magnetic circular dichroism as a function of annealing and the consequent structural ordering. The results indicate that the structural distortion mainly affects the Mn atoms as seen by the reduction of the magnetic moment from its predicted value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]