Abstract
We report the synthesis and characterization of a series of bulk forms of diluted magnetic semiconductors Li(Zn1-x-yCoxMny)As with a crystal structure close to that of III-V diluted magnetic semiconductor (Ga,Mn)As. No ferromagnetic order occurs with single (Zn,Co) or (Zn, Mn) substitution in the parent compound LiZnAs. Only with co-doped Co and Mn ferromagnetic ordering can occur at the Curie temperature ∼40 K. The maximum saturation moment of the this system reached to 2.17μB/Mn, which is comparable to that of Li (Zn,Mn)As. It is the first time that a diluted magnetic semiconductor with co-doping Co and Mn into Zn sites is achieved in “111” LiZnAs system, which could be utilized to investigate the basic science of ferromagnetism in diluted magnetic semiconductors. In addition, ferromagnetic Li(Zn,Co,Mn)As, antiferromagnetic LiMnAs, and superconducting LiFeAs share square lattice at As layers, which may enable the development of novel heterojunction devices in the future.
Highlights
The successful discovery of ferromagnetism in III-V semiconductors, especially in the prototypical system (Ga,Mn)As, has induced extensive research during the past two decades because of the potential applications for the future spintronics devices.[1,2,3,4,5,6] It is widely accepted that the ferromagnetism found in (Ga,Mn)As system arises from the hole mediated interaction between the local magnetic moments of the Mn, and is homogeneous.[4,7] For practical applications, exploring diluted magnetic semiconductors (DMSs) with Curie temperature (T C) at room temperature is a necessity
The availability of bulk forms of specimens make it possible to investigate the microscopic magnetism of DMSs based on typical bulk probes,[28] such as nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR),[29] muon spin relaxation,[17,18,20,30] neutron scattering, absorption spectroscopy (XAS),[31] resonance photoemission spectroscopy (RPES),[31] and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES).[32]
The subsequent X-ray diffraction (XRD) measurements indicate that the doping does not change the cubic structure of LiZnAs when the doping concentration is below 15%
Summary
The successful discovery of ferromagnetism in III-V semiconductors, especially in the prototypical system (Ga,Mn)As, has induced extensive research during the past two decades because of the potential applications for the future spintronics devices.[1,2,3,4,5,6] It is widely accepted that the ferromagnetism found in (Ga,Mn)As system arises from the hole mediated interaction between the local magnetic moments of the Mn, and is homogeneous.[4,7] For practical applications, exploring diluted magnetic semiconductors (DMSs) with Curie temperature (T C) at room temperature is a necessity. Li(Mn,Zn)As is not similar to (Ga,Mn)As but rather to (Zn,Mn)Te, as Mn does not introduce holes and, in order to induce ferromagnetism, acceptor co-doping is necessary, by e.g., Zn-substitutional Li, as in the case of (Zn,Mn)Te.[15,16] In addition, the same chemical valence (2+) of Mn and the host Zn allows for a rather high chemical solubility of Mn, which makes it possible to obtain bulk forms of specimens After this discovery, several new types of bulk forms of DMSs with decoupled spins and charges injections have been reported.[17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27] The availability of bulk forms of specimens make it possible to investigate the microscopic magnetism of DMSs based on typical bulk probes,[28] such as nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR),[29] muon spin relaxation (μSR),[17,18,20,30] neutron scattering, absorption spectroscopy (XAS),[31] resonance photoemission spectroscopy (RPES),[31] and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES).[32] It has been confirmed by the XAS measurements that the valence of Mn in (Ba,K)(Zn,Mn)2As2 is bivalence.
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