Half-metallic Zinc-blende Compounds

TL;DR

This paper uses first-principles calculations to identify zinc-blende half-metals suitable for spintronics, demonstrating that half-metallicity persists in multilayer heterostructures with semiconductors.

Contribution

It introduces specific zinc-blende half-metallic compounds and shows their potential for epitaxial growth with semiconductors, maintaining half-metallicity in multilayer structures.

Findings

Half-metallicity is conserved in CrAs/GaAs multilayers.

Identified zinc-blende compounds suitable for epitaxial growth.

Potential applications in spintronics.

Abstract

We report first-principles calculations of zinc-blende half-metals, identifying systems for epitaxial growth with semiconductors, and present calculations for CrAs/GaAs multilayers. We find that half-metallicity is conserved troughout the heterostructure, making this a good candidate for spintronics applications.