Stretching magnetism with an electric field in a nitride semiconductor
Sprache des Titels:
Englisch
Original Kurzfassung:
The significant inversion symmetry breaking specific to wurtzite semiconductors, and the
associated spontaneous electrical polarization, lead to outstanding features such as high
density of carriers at the GaN/(Al,Ga)N interface?exploited in high-power/high-frequency
electronics?and piezoelectric capabilities serving for nanodrives, sensors and energy
harvesting devices. Here we show that the multifunctionality of nitride semiconductors
encompasses also a magnetoelectric effect allowing to control the magnetization by an
electric field. We first demonstrate that doping of GaN by Mn results in a semi-insulating
material apt to sustain electric fields as high as 5MVcm-1. Having such a material we find
experimentally that the inverse piezoelectric effect controls the magnitude of the single-ion
magnetic anisotropy specific to Mn3ž ions in GaN. The corresponding changes in the
magnetization can be quantitatively described by a theory developed here.
Forschungs-