Using a variety of experimental, alumina nitride (AlN) based diluted magnetic semiconductors (DMSs) are found to exhibit ferromagnetic properties at room temperature by many groups. The origin of ferromagnetism in DMSs is ambiguous and difficult to be clearly identified. The geometrical structure of V doped 32-atom supercell of AlN was optimized by using the ultra-soft pseudopotential method of total-energy plane wave based on the density functional theory (DFT) . Density of states and band structure were calculated and discussed in detail. The results revealed that the V dopants were found spin-polarized. Band structures show a half metallic behaviour. The ferromagnetic ground state in V-doped AlN can be explained in terms of p-d hybridization mechanism. These results suggest that V-doped AlN may present a promising dilute magnetic semiconductor.

Date Published: 12 October 2009
PDF: 6 pages
Proc. SPIE 7518, Photonics and Optoelectronics Meetings (POEM) 2009: Solar Cells, Solid State Lighting, and Information Display Technologies, 75181A (12 October 2009); doi: 10.1117/12.841455

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 7518:
Photonics and Optoelectronics Meetings (POEM) 2009: Solar Cells, Solid State Lighting, and Information Display Technologies
Michael Grätzel; Hiroshi Amano; Chin Hsin Chen; Changqing Chen; Peng Wang, Editor(s)