This chapter presents a review of the most recent and systematic works performed on the study of the effect of atomic order on the structural and magnetic properties of Ni-Mn-Ga ferromagnetic shape memory alloys. It is shown that a correlation between long-range atomic order and the martensitic and Curie temperatures can be established from the analysis of its evolution under high and low temperature thermal treatments. In particular, it is demonstrated that, irrespectively of the thermal treatment, both transformation temperatures increase with the increasing L21 atomic order degree, showing practically the same linear dependence on the nextnearest- neighbors atomic order parameter, in such a way that the effect of the atomic order on the relative stability between austenite and martensite can be quantitatively determined. In this respect, it is shown that the effect of atomic order on the martensitic (and also the premartensitic) transformation is directly related to the variation of the magnetic exchange coupling.
Annealing effects on the structural and magnetic properties of off-stoichiometric Fe-Mn-Ga ferromagnetic shape memory alloys
