Advanced Functional Materials, Vol.22, No.16, 3434-3437, 2012
Electron Holography Studies on Narrow Magnetic Domain Walls Observed in a Heusler Alloy Ni50Mn25Al12.5Ga12.5
Peculiar magnetic domain walls produced in Heusler alloys, which have attracted renewed interest due to their potential application to actuators and spintronic devices, are studied here using electron holography. The observations reveal unexpectedly narrow magnetic domain walls, the width of which showed perfect agreement with that of the antiphase boundaries (APB, e.g., only 3 nm). While the results can be explained by the significant depression of ferromagnetism due to the local chemical disorder, the electron phase shift indicates that ferromagnetic correlation still remains in the APB region.