Bcc cobalt: Metastable phase or forced structure?

General potential linearized augmented plane wave calculations of the elastic and magnetic properties of body-centered-cubic (bcc) Co are presented and discussed. Particular attention is given to the nature of the stability of bcc Co films that have been grown epitaxially on GaAs substrates. The bcc structural phase of Co, which is not found in nature, is calculated to be unstable with respect to a tetragonal distortion that transforms it continuously into the face-centered-cubic (fcc) phase. This means that bcc Co is not a true metastable phase of bulk Co. The thinner films of bcc Co that have been synthesized are more properly termed forced structures. We speculate that the few existing thick (up to 357 Å) samples of bcc Co are stabilized by the presence of impurities or other defects. This is further supported by discrepancies between the measured and calculated magnetic moments in bcc Co.