High Curie Temperature Ferromagnetism and High Hole Mobility in Tensile Strained Mn‐Doped SiGe Thin Films

Abstract

Abstract Diluted magnetic semiconductors based on group‐IV materials are desirable for spintronic devices compatible with current silicon technology. In this work, amorphous Mn‐doped SiGe thin films are first fabricated on Ge substrates by radio frequency magnetron sputtering and then crystallized by rapid thermal annealing (RTA). After the RTA, the samples become ferromagnetic semiconductors, in which the Curie temperature increases with increasing Mn doping concentration and reaches 280 K with 5% Mn concentration. The data suggest that the ferromagnetism comes from the hole‐mediated process and is enhanced by the tensile strain in the SiGe crystals. Meanwhile, the Hall effect measurement up to 33 T to eliminate the influence of anomalous Hall effect reveals that the hole mobility of the annealed samples is greatly enhanced and the maximal value is ≈1000 cm 2 V −1 s −1 , owing to the tensile strain‐induced band structure modulation. The Mn‐doped SiGe thin films with high Curie temperature ferromagnetism and high hole mobility may provide a promising platform for semiconductor spintronics.