Hole-mediated ferromagnetism in a high-magnetic moment material, Gd-doped GaN

Akira Masago; Hikari Shinya; Tetsuya Fukushima; Kazunori Sato; Hiroshi Katayama-Yoshida

doi:10.1088/1361-648X/abac8e

Hole-mediated ferromagnetism in a high-magnetic moment material, Gd-doped GaN

J Phys Condens Matter. 2020 Sep 4;32(48). doi: 10.1088/1361-648X/abac8e.

Authors

Akira Masago¹, Hikari Shinya², Tetsuya Fukushima³, Kazunori Sato⁴, Hiroshi Katayama-Yoshida⁵

Affiliations

¹ Center for Spintronics Research Network, Graduate School of Engineering Science, Osaka University, Toyonaka, Osaka 560-8531, Japan.
² Research Institute of Electrical Communication, Tohoku University, Sendai 980-8577, Japan.
³ The Institute of Solid State Physics, The University of Tokyo, 5-1-5 Kashiwanoha, Kashiwa, Chiba 277-8581, Japan.
⁴ Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka University, 2-1 Yamadaoka, Suita 565-0871, Japan.
⁵ Center for Spintronics Research Network, Graduate School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8656, Japan.

PMID: 32756028
DOI: 10.1088/1361-648X/abac8e

Abstract

As an exotic material in spintronics, Gd-doped GaN is known as a room temperature ferromagnetic material that possesses a large magnetic moment (4000μ_Bper Gd ion). This paper theoretically proposes that the large magnetic moment and room temperature ferromagnetism observed in Gd-doped GaN is caused by N 2p holes based on the assumption that Ga-vacancies result from the introduction of Gd ions. This causes that the too large magnetic moment is estimated for Gd ions if only Gd ions contributed the magnetic moment.

Keywords: cation-vacancy-induced ferromagnetism; gadolinium-doped gallium nitride; room-temperature ferromagnetism.