No Arabic abstract
We report on a systematic study of optical properties of (Ga,Mn)As epilayers spanning the wide range of accessible substitutional Mn_Ga dopings. The growth and post-growth annealing procedures were optimized for each nominal Mn doping in order to obtain films which are as close as possible to uniform uncompensated (Ga,Mn)As mixed crystals. We observe a broad maximum in the mid-infrared absorption spectra whose position exhibits a prevailing blue-shift for increasing Mn-doping. In the visible range, a peak in the magnetic circular dichroism blue shifts with increasing Mn-doping. These observed trends confirm that disorder-broadened valence band states provide a better one-particle representation for the electronic structure of high-doped (Ga,Mn)As with metallic conduction than an energy spectrum assuming the Fermi level pinned in a narrow impurity band.
Magnetic linear dichroism and birefringence in (Ga,Mn)As epitaxial layers is investigated by measuring the polarization plane rotation of reflected linearly polarized light when magnetization lies in the plane of the sample. We report on the spectral dependence of the rotation and ellipticity angles in a broad energy range of 0.12-2.7 eV for a series of optimized samples covering a wide range on Mn-dopings and Curie temperatures and find a clear blue shift of the dominant peak at energy exceeding the host material band gap. These results are discussed in the general context of the GaAs host band structure and also within the framework of the k.p and mean-field kinetic-exchange model of the (Ga,Mn)As band structure. We find a semi-quantitative agreement between experiment and theory and discuss the role of disorder-induced non-direct transitions on magneto-optical properties of (Ga,Mn)As.
We report on a monotonic reduction of Curie temperature in dilute ferromagnetic semiconductor (Ga,Mn)As upon a well controlled chemical-etching/oxidizing thinning from 15 nm down to complete removal of the ferro- magnetic response. The effect already starts at the very beginning of the thinning process and is accompanied by the spin reorientation transition of the in-plane uniaxial anisotropy. We postulate that a negative gradient along the growth direction of self-compensating defects (Mn interstitial) and the presence of surface donor traps gives quantitative account on these effects within the p-d mean field Zener model with adequate mod- ifications to take a nonuniform distribution of holes and Mn cations into account. The described here effects are of practical importance for employing thin and ultrathin layers of (Ga,Mn)As or relative compounds in concept spintronics devices, like resonant tunneling devices in particular.
We report on the determination of micromagnetic parameters of epilayers of the ferromagnetic semiconductor (Ga,Mn)As, which has easy axis in the sample plane, and (Ga,Mn)(As,P) which has easy axis perpendicular to the sample plane. We use an optical analog of ferromagnetic resonance where the laser-pulse-induced precession of magnetization is measured directly in the time domain. By the analysis of a single set of pump-and-probe magneto-optical data we determined the magnetic anisotropy fields, the spin stiffness and the Gilbert damping constant in these two materials. We show that incorporation of 10% of phosphorus in (Ga,Mn)As with 6% of manganese leads not only to the expected sign change of the perpendicular to plane anisotropy field but also to an increase of the Gilbert damping and to a reduction of the spin stiffness. The observed changes in the micromagnetic parameters upon incorporating P in (Ga,Mn)As are consistent with the reduced hole density, conductivity, and Curie temperature of the (Ga,Mn)(As,P) material. We report that the magnetization precession damping is stronger for the n = 1 spin wave resonance mode than for the n = 0 uniform magnetization precession mode.
The magnetic and transport properties of (GaMn)As are known to be influenced by postgrowth annealing, and it is generally accepted that these modifications are due to outdiffusion of Mn interstitials. We show that the annealing-induced modifications are strongly accelerated if the treatment is carried out under As capping. This means that the modification rate is not limited by the diffusion process, but rather by the surface trapping of the diffusing species.
We present a theoretical survey of magnetocrystalline anisotropies in (Ga,Mn)As epilayers and compare the calculations to available experimental data. Our model is based on an envelope function description of the valence band holes and a spin representation for their kinetic-exchange interaction with localised electrons on Mn ions, treated in the mean-field approximation. For epilayers with growth induced lattice-matching strains we study in-plane to out-of-plane easy-axis reorientations as a function of Mn local-moment concentration, hole concentration, and temperature. Next we focus on the competition of in-plane cubic and uniaxial anisotropies. We add an in-plane shear strain to the effective Hamiltonian in order to capture measured data in bare, unpatterned epilayers, and we provide microscopic justification for this approach. The model is then extended by an in-plane uniaxial strain and used to directly describe experiments with strains controlled by postgrowth lithography or attaching a piezo stressor. The calculated easy-axis directions and anisotropy fields are in semiquantitative agreement with experiment in a wide parameter range.