High-throughput computational screening for bipolar magnetic semiconductors

Abstract

Searching ferromagnetic semiconductor materials with electrically controllable spin polarization is a long-term challenge for spintronics. Bipolar magnetic semiconductors (BMS), with valence and conduction band edges fully spin-polarized in different spin directions, show great promise in this aspect because the carrier's spin polarization direction can be easily tuned by voltage gate. Here, we propose a standard high-throughput computational screening scheme for searching BMS materials. The application of this scheme to the Materials Project database gives 11 intrinsic BMS materials (1 experimental and 10 theoretical) from nearly ∼40000 structures. Among them, a room temperature BMS Li 2 V 3 TeO 8 (mp-771246) is discovered with a Curie temperature of 478 K. Moreover, the BMS feature can be maintained well when cutting the bulk Li2V3TeO8 into (001) nanofilms for realistic applica-