Carbon p Electron Ferromagnetism in Silicon Carbide

Abstract

Ferromagnetism can occur in wide-band gap semiconductors as well as in carbon-based materials when specific defects are introduced. It is thus desirable to establish a direct relation between the defects and the resulting ferromagnetism. Here, we contribute to revealing the origin of defect-induced ferromagnetism using SiC as a prototypical example. We show that the long-range ferromagnetic coupling can be attributed to the p electrons of the nearest-neighbor carbon atoms around the VSiVC divacancies. Thus, the ferromagnetism is traced down to its microscopic, electronic origin.

27 pages, 9 figures, Scientific Reports, in press (2015)

References in corpus (8)

• Magnetism in Graphene Induced by Single-Atom Defects
• Emergence of magnetism in graphene materials and nanostructures
• Induced Magnetic Ordering by Proton Irradiation in Graphite
• Room-temperature ferromagnetism in graphite driven by 2D networks of point defects
• Magnetism in Disordered Graphene and Irradiated Graphite
• $\pi$-Electron Ferromagnetism in Metal Free Carbon Probed by Soft X-Ray Dichroism
• Electronic and magnetic properties of the graphene-ferromagnet interface
• Rise and fall of defect induced ferromagnetism in SiC single crystals

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Interaction between magnetic moments and itinerant carriers in d0 ferromagnetic SiC
• Defect-induced magnetism in SiC probed by nuclear magnetic resonance
• Towards diluted magnetism in TaAs