We present a x-ray dichroism study of graphite surfaces that addresses the origin and magnitude of ferromagnetism in metal-free carbon. We find that, in addition to carbon $pi$ states, also hydrogen-mediated electronic states exhibit a net spin polarization with significant magnetic remanence at room temperature. The observed magnetism is restricted to the top $approx$10 nm of the irradiated sample where the actual magnetization reaches $ simeq 15$ emu/g at room temperature. We prove that the ferromagnetism found in metal-free untreated graphite is intrinsic and has a similar origin as the one found in proton bombarded graphite.
We prove a spontaneous magnetization of the oxygen-terminated ZnO (0001) surface by utilizing a multi-code, SIESTA and KKR, first-principles approach, involving both LSDA+U and selfinteraction corrections (SIC) to treat electron correlation effects. Critical temperatures are estimated from Monte Carlo simulations, showing that at and above 300 K the surface is thermodynamically stable and ferromagnetic. The observed half-metallicity and long-range magnetic order originate from the presence of p-holes in the valence band of the oxide. The mechanism is universal in ionic oxides and points to a new route for the design of ferromagnetic low dimensional systems.
By employing first-principles metadynamics simulations, we explore the 300 K structures of solid hydrogen over the pressure range 150-300 GPa. At 200 GPa, we find the ambient-pressure disordered hexagonal close-packed (hcp) phase transited into an insulating partially ordered hcp phase (po-hcp), a mixture of ordered graphene-like H2 layers and the other layers of weakly coupled, disordered H2 molecules. Within this phase, hydrogen remains in paired states with creation of shorter intra-molecular bonds, which are responsible for the very high experimental Raman peak above 4000 cm-1. At 275 GPa, our simulations predicted a transformation from po-hcp into the ordered molecular metallic Cmca phase (4 molecules/cell) that was previously proposed to be stable only above 400 GPa. Gibbs free energy calculations at 300 K confirmed the energetic stabilities of the po-hcp and metallic Cmca phases over all known structures at 220-242 GPa and >242 GPa, respectively. Our simulations highlighted the major role played by temperature in tuning the phase stabilities and provided theoretical support for claimed metallization of solid hydrogen below 300 GPa at 300 K.
Unexpected ferromagnetism has been observed in carbon doped ZnO films grown by pulsed laser deposition [Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 127201 (2007)]. In this letter, we introduce carbon into ZnO films by ion implantation. Room temperature ferromagnetism has been observed. Our analysis demonstrates that (1) C-doped ferromagnetic ZnO can be achieved by an alternative method, i.e. ion implantation, and (2) the chemical involvement of carbon in the ferromagnetism is indirectly proven.
The search for oxide-based room-temperature ferromagnetism has been one of the holy grails in condensed matter physics. Room-temperature ferromagnetism observed in Nb-doped SrTiO3 single crystals is reported in this Rapid Communication. The ferromagnetism can be eliminated by air annealing (making the samples predominantly diamagnetic) and can be recovered by subsequent vacuum annealing. The temperature dependence of magnetic moment resembles the temperature dependence of carrier density, indicating that the magnetism is closely related to the free carriers. Our results suggest that the ferromagnetism is induced by oxygen vacancies. In addition, hysteretic magnetoresistance was observed for magnetic field parallel to current, indicating that the magnetic moments are in the plane of the samples. The x-ray photoemission spectroscopy, the static time-of-flight and the dynamic secondary ion mass spectroscopy and proton induced x-ray emission measurements were performed to examine magnetic impurities, showing that the observed ferromagnetism is unlikely due to any magnetic contaminant.
Topologically-protected surface states present rich physics and promising spintronic, optoelectronic and photonic applications that require a proper understanding of their ultrafast carrier dynamics. Here, we investigate these dynamics in topological insulators (TIs) of the bismuth and antimony chalcogenide family, where we isolate the response of Dirac fermions at the surface from the response of bulk carriers by combining photoexcitation with below-bandgap terahertz (THz) photons with TI samples with varying Fermi level, including one sample with the Fermi level located within the bandgap. We identify distinctly faster relaxation of charge carriers in the topologically-protected Dirac surface states (few hundred femtoseconds), compared to bulk carriers (few picoseconds). In agreement with such fast cooling dynamics, we observe THz harmonic generation without any saturation effects for increasing incident fields, unlike graphene which exhibits strong saturation. This opens up promising avenues for increased THz nonlinear conversion efficiencies, and high-bandwidth optoelectronic and spintronic information and communication applications.