Ferromagnetism and Carrier Transport in n-type Diluted Magnetic Semiconductors Ge0.96-xBixFe0.04Te Thin Film

The structural, Hall effect, electronic transport, and magnetic properties of Ge0.96-xBixFe0.04Te epitaxial thin film as prepared by pulsed laser deposition technique were reported. X-ray diffraction patterns including linear scans and phi scans confirmed that all films are high quality epitaxy and crystallinity. With the substitution of high valence Bi for Ge element, we found that the previous carriers of hole were changed to electron, which was testified by the negative slopes obtained from the measurements of Hall effect under different temperatures. The electronic transports show a typical semiconductor behavior and can be understood by the small polaron hopping model because the lattice distortions increase the electron-phonon interaction. An obvious ferromagnetic properties occur in the high Bi-doping Ge0.64Bi0.32Fe0.04Te rather than in that with low Bi-doping concentration, indicating that the ferromagnetic establishment is entirely dependent on carrier's transmissions. The first-principles calculation performed on this system also reveals that the ferromagnetic state exactly exists in the present n-type diluted magnetic semiconductors with Bi co-dopants.