Exchange Coupling in Magnetic Semiconductor Multilayers and Superlattices

• Authors: J. Furdyna , J. Leiner , X. Liu , M. Dobrowolska , S. Lee , J. Chung , B. Kirby
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The study of ferromagnetic semiconductors continues to be of great interest because of their potential for spintronic devices. While there has been much progress in our understanding of ferromagnetic semiconductor materials - particularly of the canonical III-V system Ga_{1-x}Mn_xAs - many issues still remain unresolved. One of these is the nature of interlayer exchange coupling in GaMnAs-based multilayers, an issue that is important from the point of view of possible spintronic applications. In this connection, it is important to establish under what conditions the interlayer exchange coupling between successive GaMnAs layers is antiferromagnetic or ferromagnetic, since manipulation of such interlayer exchange coupling can then be directly applied to achieve giant magnetoresistance and other devices based on this material. In this review we will describe magneto-transport, magnetization, and neutron reflectometry experiments applied to two types of GaMnAs-based multilayer structures - superlattices and tri-layers - consisting of GaMnAs layers separated by non-magnetic GaAs spacers. These measurements serve to identify conditions under which AFM coupling will occur in such GaMnAs/GaAs multilayer systems, thus providing us the information which can be used for manipulating magnetization (and thus also giant magnetoresistance) in structures based on the ferromagnetic semiconductor GaMnAs.

Keywords

EN

75.50.Pp; 61.05.fj; 75.47.De; 75.70.Cn

Discipline

• 61.05.fj: Neutron reflectometry
• 75.70.Cn: Magnetic properties of interfaces (multilayers, superlattices, heterostructures)
• 75.50.Pp: Magnetic semiconductors
• 75.47.De: Giant magnetoresistance

• Publisher: Institute of Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Acta Physica Polonica A
• Year: 2012
• Volume: 121
• Issue: 5-6
• Pages: 973-980

Dates

published

2012-05

Contributors

author

J. Furdyna

• Department of Physics, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556, USA

author

J. Leiner

• Department of Physics, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556, USA

author

X. Liu

• Department of Physics, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556, USA

author

M. Dobrowolska

• Department of Physics, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556, USA

author

S. Lee

• Department of Physics, Korea University, Seoul 136-713, Korea

author

J. Chung

• Department of Physics, Korea University, Seoul 136-713, Korea

author

B. Kirby

• Center for Neutron Research, NIST, Gaithersburg, MD 20899, USA

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Identifiers

DOI

10.12693/APhysPolA.121.973