Half-metallic ferromagnetism in Cr-doped semiconducting Ge-chalcogenide: Density functional approach

Abstract

A supercell approach has been used to calculate the electronic and magnetic properties of Cr-doped Ge chalcogenide, Ge1−xCrxTe (x = 0.25 and 0.125). The calculations have been performed using full potential Linear Augmented Plane Wave (FPLAPW) method within generalized gradient approximation (GGA) as exchange-correlation (XC) potential. The calculated results show that the doping of Cr induces the 100% spin polarization at Fermi level (EF) and showed the robust half metallic ferromagnetism in this compound. Thus, the compound at both dopant concentrations behave as dilute magnetic semiconductor (DMS) showing metallic property in majority and semiconducting for minority spin channels which is best suited for spintronic applications. The total magnetic moments of this compound are mainly due to Cr-d states present at EF with negligible contribution from electronic states of other atoms.