Annealing effect on ferromagnetic properties, hole concentration and electronic band structure of GaMnAs epitaxial layers

Abstract

In this paper, we analyze the correlation of the magnetism and the carrier concentration with the shift of the spectroscopic critical points for low compensated GaMnAs samples with a high Curie temperature of around 150 K. The GaMnAs layers were grown by low-temperature molecular beam epitaxy. The low-temperature annealing leads to a reduction of Mn interstitials from 0.8 to 0.4% and an enhancement in the hole concentration. The saturation magnetization is 51 emu/cm $$^3$$ and the Curie temperature is 150 K after post-growth annealing, while those of as-grown layers are 37 emu/cm $$^3$$ and 80 K. The resistivity dropped significantly after the post-growth annealing, due to the fact that the number of Mn $$_I$$ , which act as double donors and compensate holes, was significantly reduced by the low-temperature and long-time annealing. The electronic band structure is investigated by spectroscopic ellipsometry. The transition energies of critical points show redshift after post-growth annealing due to the annealing-induced enhancement of the hole concentration. Our results support the valence band picture (the Zener model) in ferromagnetic GaMnAs.