The material class of Heusler compounds contains several promising candidates regarding their utilization in the field of spintronics and in particular magnon spintronics. The major reasons for the interest in Heusler compounds are their high Curie temperature, their high spin polarization, and their low magnetic Gilbert damping.

Spintronics can be regarded as an extension of conventional electronics by using the electrons’ spin as an additional degree of freedom for applications in data storage and sensing. Spintronic devices mainly rely on magneto-resistive effects such as the giant magneto resistance and tunneling magneto resistance. For the optimization of these effects, it is crucial to find materials with a high spin polarization such as the Heusler compounds. The field of magnon spintronics can largely benefit from the low Gilbert damping in some of the Heusler compounds. The major motivation behind magnon spintronics is an energy-efficient information transport and processing that is purely based on magnons, which are the fundamental excitations in a magnetic material. A major challenge in magnon spintronics is the identification and development of suitable low-damping materials for the realization of magnon conduits on the microscale. This challenge can be addressed by the utilization of Heusler compounds.

Heusler compounds have the general composition X₂YZ or XYZ, where X and Y are transition metals, and Z is an element out of the main groups III-V. One of the most promising classes of Heusler materials is given by the cobalt-based compounds with the composition Co₂YZ. The reason for both, the high spin polarization as well as the low Gilbert damping, is the half-metallic character of Heusler compounds. Half metallicity describes the different features in the band structure of minority and majority electrons close to the Fermi energy. For the minority electrons, a band gap can be found at the Fermi energy. In contrast to this, the majority spin channel exhibits a finite density of states at the Fermi level and, thus, metallic character.