Structural and magnetic properties of (Al, Fe)-codoped SiC

Abstract

In this study, as a first attempt, we choose Al and transition metals (TMs), Fe, as codoping atoms to synthesize (Al, TM)-codoped SiC. X-ray diffraction and Raman analysis showed that a series of single-phase codoped 4H-SiC samples were obtained and no trace of any other impurity phases, such as Fe 3 Si and polytypes of other types of SiC, was found. Measurement of magnetic properties showed that codoping by Al and Fe elements changed the original glassy ferromagnetism (FM) features in Al-doped SiC and induced a robust room temperature FM order that gradually dominated (Al, Fe)-codoped 4H-SiC with increase in Fe content. The contribution of Al elements to the magnetic properties of (Al, Fe)-codoped 4H-SiC can be neglected and the magnetic origin should be ascribed to be induced by Fe doping. The only major role of Al is to stabilize the codoped crystal structure as 4H- single phase. As the first investigation on (Al, TM)-codoped SiC, this study opens a new pathway to obtain TM-doped SiC-based diluted magnetic semiconductors with a high T c via the codoping strategy.