Interfacial properties of dilute magnetic semiconductor films

Brian Kirby, LANSCE

The field of spintronics (spin electronics) has attracted a great deal of recent research interest, due to the promise of novel electronic devices. Dilute magnetic semiconductors (DMS) - in which magnetic impurities are artificially substituted into a common semiconductor's crystal lattice - could play an important role in spintronics technology, as a source of spin-polarized current into semiconductor devices.

Polarized neutron reflectivity (PNR) can be used to measure the magnetic depth profiles of DMS, despite the extremely small magnetizations typical of these materials (< 50 emu cm^-3). Additionally, PNR and x-ray reflectivity can be used to measure the depth-dependent chemical compositions of these materials. This seminar will discuss how our group has used reflectivity measurements to investigate:
1) The mechanisms through which annealing drastically affects the ferromagnetic exchange in the DMS Ga_1-xMn_xAs.
2) The nature of exchange coupling in a DMS - an interesting case because the coupling involves a dilute concentration of randomly dispersed magnetic particles.

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