High Curie Temperature Ferromagnetism and High Hole Mobility in Tensile Strained Mn-doped SiGe Thin Films

Abstract: Diluted magnetic semiconductors (DMSs) based on group-IV materials are desirable for spintronic devices compatible with current silicon technology. In this work, amorphous Mn-doped SiGe thin films were first fabricated on Ge substrates by radio frequency magnetron sputtering and then crystallized by rapid thermal annealing (RTA). After the RTA, the samples became ferromagnetic (FM) semiconductors, in which the Curie temperature increased with increasing Mn doping concentration and reached 280 K with 5% Mn concentration. The data suggest that the ferromagnetism came from the hole-mediated process and was 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 (AHE) reveals that the hole mobility of the annealed samples was greatly enhanced and the maximal value was ~1000 cm2/Vs, 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.