Defect energetics and magnetic properties of 3d-transition-metal-doped topological crystalline insulator SnTe

TL;DR

This study uses first-principles calculations to analyze the defect energetics and magnetic properties of 3d transition-metal doping in SnTe, highlighting Mn as a promising dopant for magnetic order and quantum anomalous Hall effects.

Contribution

It provides new insights into the energetics and magnetic behavior of TM-doped SnTe, identifying Mn as an effective dopant for magnetic and topological applications.

Findings

Doped TM atoms prefer neutral states with high formation energies.

All magnetic TM atoms are in high-spin states in dilute doping.

Mn-doped SnTe shows low defect formation energy and strong magnetic moments.

Abstract

The introduction of magnetism in SnTe-class topological crystalline insulators is a challenging subject with great importance in the quantum device applications. Based on the first-principles calculations, we have studied the defect energetics and magnetic properties of 3d transition-metal (TM)-doped SnTe. We find that the doped TM atoms prefer to stay in the neutral states and have comparatively high formation energies, suggesting that the uniform TM doping in SnTe with a higher concentration will be difficult unless clustering. In the dilute doping regime, all the magnetic TM atoms are in the high-spin states, indicating that the spin splitting energy of 3d TM is stronger than the crystal splitting energy of the SnTe ligand. Importantly, Mn-doped SnTe has relatively low defect formation energy, largest local magnetic moment, and no defect levels in the bulk gap, suggesting that Mn is a promising magnetic dopant to realize the magnetic order for the theoretically-proposed large-Chern-number quantum anomalous Hall effect (QAHE) in SnTe.