Electronic Structure and Ferromagnetic Properties of Doped Calcium Sulfide Ca1−xTMxS (TM = V, Cr and Co)

Abstract

The electronic structure and magnetic properties of diluted Ca[Formula: see text]TMxS (TM[Formula: see text][Formula: see text][Formula: see text]V, Cr and Co) in the rocksalt structure at concentrations [Formula: see text], 0.125 and 0.25 were studied using the full-potential linearized augmented plane wave approximation of the density functional theory with the Wu-Cohen generalized gradient approximation (WC-GGA) and the Tran–Blaha-modified Becke–Johnson (TB-mBJ) potential. Features such as lattice constant, bulk modulus, spin-polarized band structures, total and local densities of states and magnetic properties have been computed. The electronic structure show that Ca[Formula: see text](V, Cr)xS at all the studied concentrations and the diluted Ca[Formula: see text]CoxS with [Formula: see text] compounds are half-metallic ferromagnets with spin polarization of 100%. The calculated total magnetic moments for Ca[Formula: see text]VxS and Ca[Formula: see text]CoxS show the same integer value of 3[Formula: see text][Formula: see text] per formula unit and Ca[Formula: see text]CrxS exhibit a total magnetic moment of 4[Formula: see text][Formula: see text], which confirm the half-metallic behavior of these compounds. We also calculated the values of the band edge spin splitting of the valence and conduction bands and the exchange constants. We have found that the ferromagnetic state is stable by the p-d exchange associated with the double-exchange mechanism. The diluted Ca[Formula: see text](V,Cr,Co)xS are found to be new promising candidates for spintronic applications.