Defect-Induced Magnetism in Neutron Irradiated 6<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mml:mi>H</mml:mi></mml:math>-SiC Single Crystals

Abstract

Defect-induced magnetism is firstly observed in neutron irradiated SiC single crystals. We demonstrated that the intentionally created defects dominated by divacancies (V(Si)V(C)) are responsible for the observed magnetism. First-principles calculations revealed that defect states favor the formation of local moments and the extended tails of defect wave functions make long-range spin couplings possible. Our results confirm the existence of defect-induced magnetism, implying the possibility of tuning the magnetism of wide band-gap semiconductors by defect engineering.