Electric field control of room temperature ferromagnetism in III-N dilute magnetic semiconductor films

Abstract

We report on the electrical field control of ferromagnetism (FM) at room temperature in III-N dilute magnetic semiconductor (DMS) films. A GaMnN layer was grown on top of an n-GaN substrate and found to be almost always paramagnetic. However, when grown on a p-type GaN layer, a strong saturation magnetization (Ms) was observed. This FM in GaMnN can be controlled by depletion of the holes in the GaMnN/p-GaN/n-GaN multilayer structures. We have demonstrated the dependence of the FM on the thickness of the p-GaN in this heterostructure and on the applied bias to the GaN p-n junction. The Ms was measured by an alternating gradient magnetometer (AGM) and a strong correlation between the hole concentration near the GaMnN/p-GaN interface and the magnetic properties of the DMS was observed. At room temperature an anomalous Hall effect was measured for zero bias and an ordinary Hall effect for reverse bias in a fully depleted p-GaN layer. This is in close agreement with the AGM measurement results.