Impact of substrate temperature on magnetic properties of plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy grown (Ga,Mn)N

TL;DR

This study investigates how substrate temperature during plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy affects the structural, microstructural, and magnetic properties of (Ga,Mn)N layers, revealing a strong correlation between growth temperature and magnetic behavior.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of the impact of substrate temperature on (Ga,Mn)N's properties, highlighting the sensitivity of Curie temperature to local growth conditions and methods for assessing magnetic homogeneity.

Findings

No phase separation or nanocrystals detected at various growth temperatures.

Magnetic properties, including Curie temperature, strongly depend on local substrate temperature.

Precise control of substrate temperature is crucial for uniform magnetic properties in (Ga,Mn)N.

Abstract

A range of high quality Ga1-xMnxN layers have been grown by molecular beam epitaxy with manganese concentration 0.2 < x < 10%, having the x value tuned by changing the growth temperature (Tg) between 700 and 590 {\deg}C, respectively. We present a systematic structural and microstructure characterization by atomic force microscopy, secondary ion mass spectrometry, transmission electron microscopy, powder-like and high resolution X-ray diffraction, which do not reveal any crystallographic phase separation, clusters or nanocrystals, even at the lowest Tg. Our synchrotron based X-ray absorption near-edge spectroscopy supported by density functional theory modelling and superconducting quantum interference device magnetometry results point to the predominantly +3 configuration of Mn in GaN and thus the ferromagnetic phase has been observed in layers with x > 5% at 3 < T < 10 K. The main detrimental effect of Tg reduced to 590 {\deg}C is formation of flat hillocks, which increase the surface root-mean-square roughness, but only to mere 3.3 nm. Fine substrates surface temperature mapping has shown that the magnitudes of both x and Curie temperature (Tc) correlate with local Tg. It has been found that a typical 10 {\deg}C variation of Tg across 1 inch substrate can lead to 40% dispersion of Tc. The established here strong sensitivity of Tc on Tg turns magnetic measurements into a very efficient tool providing additional information on local Tg, an indispensable piece of information for growth mastering of ternary compounds in which metal species differ in almost every aspect of their growth related parameters determining the kinetics of the growth. We also show that the precise determination of Tc by two different methods, each sensitive to different moments of Tc distribution, may serve as a tool for quantification of spin homogeneity within the material.