Magnetic and electronic properties of transition metal doped beta-SiC - a diluted magnetic semiconductor

Abstract

We used ab initio pseudopotential plane wave methods to study the magnetic and electronic properties of transition-metal doped β-SiC. It is found that the SiC:Cr reveals stable ferromagnetism with permanent magnetic moments as large as 2 μB regardless of substitution site. In addition, the SiC:Crsi is predicted to have good electron mobility and wide spin band-gap of 1.58 eV with the Fermi level at the center of the gap, which is desirable for realizing spintronic devices.