CrAlGe: An itinerant ferromagnet with strong tunability by heat treatment

We present a comprehensive investigation on CrAlGe and realize that it is an itinerant ferromagnet with strong tunability of the Curie temperature $T_{\rm C}$ and the spontaneous moment $\mu_0$ depending on annealing heat treatment. While the value of $T_{\rm C}$ was previously reported to be 80 K with $\mu_0\approx$ 0.41$\mu_{\rm B}$, in this work the two quantities attain values as high as 170 K and 0.66$\mu_{\rm B}$, respectively. Heat treatment does not cause changes of the lattice parameters and symmetry, but results in a slight narrowing of the Bragg peaks. The strong tunability of the itinerant ferromagnetism indicates significantly tunable hybridization between the Cr 3d electrons and the conduction bands, in agreement with the dominant Cr-Al/Ge bonds of this compound. Further tuning along the same line towards even stronger or weaker itinerant ferromagnetism promises an interesting follow-up to clarify the localized-itinerant duality of the 3d electrons in this compound.