The Al Doping Effect on Epitaxial (In,Mn)As Dilute Magnetic Semiconductors Prepared by Ion Implantation and Pulsed Laser Melting

Materials (Basel). 2021 Jul 25;14(15):4138. doi: 10.3390/ma14154138.

Abstract

One of the most attractive characteristics of diluted ferromagnetic semiconductors is the possibility to modulate their electronic and ferromagnetic properties, coupled by itinerant holes through various means. A prominent example is the modification of Curie temperature and magnetic anisotropy by ion implantation and pulsed laser melting in III-V diluted magnetic semiconductors. In this study, to the best of our knowledge, we performed, for the first time, the co-doping of (In,Mn)As diluted magnetic semiconductors by Al by co-implantation subsequently combined with a pulsed laser annealing technique. Additionally, the structural and magnetic properties were systematically investigated by gradually raising the Al implantation fluence. Unexpectedly, under a well-preserved epitaxial structure, all samples presented weaken Curie temperature, magnetization, as well as uniaxial magnetic anisotropies when more aluminum was involved. Such a phenomenon is probably due to enhanced carrier localization introduced by Al or the suppression of substitutional Mn atoms.

Keywords: co-doping; ion implantation; magnetic properties; magnetic semiconductors.