Room-Temperature Ferromagnetism in Fe-doped SnSe Bulk Single Crystalline Semiconductor

TL;DR

This paper reports the discovery of room-temperature ferromagnetism in Fe-doped SnSe single crystals, a semiconducting van der Waals material with potential for spintronic applications, synthesized via a scalable melt-growth process.

Contribution

It introduces a new room-temperature ferromagnetic semiconductor, Fe-doped SnSe, with a simple scalable synthesis method and no in-gap defect states, expanding the family of magnetic semiconductors.

Findings

Curie temperature of ~310 K

Semiconducting bandgap of ~1.19 eV

Dilute Fe doping less than 1.0 at%

Abstract

The quest for pragmatic room-temperature (RT) magnetic semiconductors (MSs) with a suitable bandgap constitutes one of the contemporary opportunities to be exploited. This may provide a materials platform for to bring new-generation ideal information device technologies into real-world applications where the otherwise conventionally separately utilized charge and spin are simultaneously exploited. Here we present RT ferromagnetism in an Fe-doped SnSe (Fe:SnSe) van der Waals (vdW) single crystalline ferromagnetic semiconductor (FMS) with a semiconducting bandgap of ~1.19 eV (comparable to those of Si and GaAs). The synthesized Fe:SnSe single crystals feature a dilute Fe content of less than 1.0 at%, a Curie temperature of ~310 K, a layered vdW structure identical to that of pristine SnSe, and the absence of in-gap defect states. The Fe:SnSe vdW diluted magnetic semiconductor (DMS) single crystals are grown using a simple temperature-gradient melt-growth process, in which the magnetic Fe atom doping is realized uniquely using FeI2 as the dopant precursor whose melting point is low with respect to crystal growth, and which in principle possesses industrially unlimited scalability. Our work adds a new member in the family of long-searching RT magnetic semiconductors, and may establish a generalized strategy for large-volume production of related DMSs.