Magnetic and structural properties of MnRh thin Films

A systematic study of magnetic and structural properties of MnRh thin films fabricated by sputter-deposition onto silica glass has been conducted. The MnRh thin films are found to be of the CsCl-type structure, and ferromagnetic at room temperature. The MnRh thin film undergoes the magnetic phase transition between antiferromagnetic and ferromagnetic states at a temperature around 175 K and 310 K during the cooling and heating process, respectively. The temperature dependence of the magnetization shows a thermal hysteresis of about 120 K. An exchange bias field of about 450 Oe at 5 K was observed with the coercivity of 900 Oe and unidirectional anisotropy constant of about 0.45 erg/cm2. The magnetic field dependence of M-T shows that the transition temperature of about 230 K remains unchanged with increasing field during the temperature variation process. A detailed STEM-EDS analysis indicates a non-uniform compositional distribution of Mn and Rh with an average composition of Mn58Rh42 at%. A high resolution STEM-HAADF analysis reveals the compositional variations within the CsCl-type MnRh grains. It is proposed that the origin of exchange bias effect is resulted from the exchange coupling between the ferromagnetic region with Mn-rich and the antiferromagnetic region with nearly the equiatomic composition.