High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! A Heusler alloy is a ferromagnetic metal alloy based on a Heusler phase. Heusler phases are intermetallics with particular composition and face-centered cubic crystal structure. They are ferromagnetic—even though the constituting elements are not—as a result of the double-exchange mechanism between neighboring magnetic ions. The latter are usually manganese ions, which sit at the body centers of the cubic structure and carry most of the magnetic moment of the alloy. (See the Bethe-Slater curve for more info on why this happens.)