Structural and optical properties of sputtered gadolinium nitride films

Abstract

Rare-earth (RE) materials have high magnetic moments and form a wide range of magnetic structures. There has been speculation in the literature that rare-earth nitrides may form half-metallic ferromagnetics. This is surprising because, based on a simple ionic model, trivalent rare-earth nitrides would be expected to be insulators with a similar electronic structure to the divalent rare-earth chalcogenides. However if it is the case that they are half-metallic or narrow gap insulators, then they have potential applications in spin-filtering devices. In the present investigation, We have deposited GdN films on glass substrate at room temperature by Ar/N2 mixed gas plasma-radio frequency (rf) sputtering method. The structure and the complex optical properties as well as the energy gap of GdN thin films as a function of N2 partial pressure are determined.