Is manganese-doped diamond a ferromagnetic semiconductor?

Abstract

We use density-functional theoretical methods to examine the recent prediction, based on a mean-field solution of the Zener model, that diamond doped by Mn (with spin S=5/2) would be a dilute magnetic semiconductor that remains ferromagnetic well above room temperature. Our findings suggest this to be unlikely, for four reasons: (1) substitutional Mn in diamond has a low-spin S=1/2 ground state; (2) the substitutional site is energetically unfavorable relative to the much larger "divacancy" site; 3) Mn in the divacancy site is an acceptor, but with only hyperdeep levels, and hence the holes are likely to remain localized; (4) the calculated Heisenberg couplings between Mn in nearby divacancy sites are two orders of magnitude smaller than for substitutional Mn in germanium.

arXiv comment5 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (2)

• Hole-mediated ferromagnetism in tetrahedrally coordinated semiconductors
• Self-compensation in manganese-doped ferromagnetic semiconductors

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Tailoring ferromagnetic chalcopyrites
• Role of Disorder in Mn:GaAs, Cr:GaAs, and Cr:GaN
• First principles investigation of transition-metal doped group-IV semiconductors: R${}_x$Y${}_{1-x}$ (R=Cr, Mn, Fe; Y=Si, Ge)
• Large Magnetic Moments of Arsenic-Doped Mn Clusters and their Relevance to Mn-Doped III-V Semiconductor Ferromagnetism