Magnetic and structural anisotropies of Co<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mml:msub><mml:mrow/><mml:mn>2</mml:mn></mml:msub></mml:math>FeAl Heusler alloy epitaxial thin films

This paper shows the correlation between chemical order, lattice strains, and magnetic properties of Heusler Co${}_{2}$FeAl films epitaxially grown on MgO(001). A detailed magnetic characterization is performed using vector-field magnetometery combined with a numerical Stoner-Wohlfarth analysis. We demonstrate the presence of three types of in-plane anisotropies: one biaxial, as expected for the cubic symmetry, and two uniaxial. The three anisotropies show different behavior with the annealing temperature. The biaxial anisotropy shows a monotonic increase. The uniaxial anisotropy that is parallel to the hard biaxial axes (related to chemical homogeneity) decreases, while the anisotropy that is supposed to have a magnetostatic origin remains constant.