Properties of group-IV-based ferromagnetic semiconductor GeFe: Growth temperature dependence, lattice constant, location of Fe atoms, and their relevance to the magnetic properties

Abstract

We report the growth temperature dependence of the properties of the group-IV-based ferromagnetic semiconductor Ge1-xFex films (x = 6.5% and 10.5%), including the lattice constant, Curie temperature (TC), and Fe-atom locations. While TC strongly depends on the growth temperature, we find a universal relationship between TC and the lattice constant, which does not depend on the Fe content x. By using the channeling Rutherford backscattering and particle-induced X-ray emission measurements, it is clarified that about 15% of the Fe atoms exist in the tetrahedral interstitial sites in the Ge0.935Fe0.065 lattice and that the substitutional Fe concentration is not correlated with TC. Considering these results, we suggest that the non-uniformity of the Fe concentration plays an important role in determining the ferromagnetic properties of GeFe.

References in corpus (7)

• Calculating the Curie Temperature reliably in diluted III-V ferromagnetic semiconductors
• Strain-Control of the magnetic anisotropy in (Ga,Mn)(As,P) ferromagnetic semiconductor layers
• Nature of magnetic coupling between Mn ions in as-grown Ga${}_{1-x}$Mn${}_x$As studied by x-ray magnetic circular dichroism
• Disorder in Diluted Spin Systems
• Magneto-optical properties of a new group-IV ferromagnetic semiconductor Ge1-xFex grown by low-temperature molecular beam epitaxy
• Intrinsic and Extrinsic Contributions to the Lattice Parameter of GaMnAs
• Ion-beam modification of the magnetic properties of GaMnAs epilayers

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Spinodal nanodecomposition in magnetically doped semiconductors
• Room temperature local ferromagnetism and nanoscale domain growth in the ferromagnetic semiconductor GeFe
• Annealing-induced enhancement of ferromagnetism and nano-particle formation in ferromagnetic-semiconductor GeFe
• Electronic Structure of the Ferromagnetic Semiconductor Fe-doped Ge Revealed by Soft X-ray Angle-Resolved Photoemission Spectroscopy
• Tunneling magnetoresistance in trilayer structures composed of group-IV ferromagnetic semiconductor Ge1-xFex, MgO, and Fe
• Impurity band conduction in group-IV ferromagnetic semiconductor Ge1-xFex with nanoscale fluctuations in Fe concentration