Magnetic properties of ErN films

Intrinsic reduction of the ordered4fmagnetic moments in semiconducting rare-earth nitride thin films: DyN, ErN, and HoN

“…The magnetic moments, calculated by converting the fitted magnetic SLD into μ B per formula unit [21], were determined at 5 K for the nitride and are recorded in Table II. The values agree well with previous magnetometry data for DyN and ErN thin films at the same field which is near saturation [7,16]; however, they are far lower than the theoretical predictions based on Hund's rules and density-functional theory [2]. Although our results agree well with the modern thin-film studies for ErN and DyN, the thin-film data do not match past bulk data.…”

“…Recently thin-film capping layers have been shown to circumvent the oxidation problem by providing a protective coating for certain REN films including GdN [3,6,7] with varying degrees of success [15]. While the * d.l.cortie@gmail.com † Now at Department of Physics, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA ‡ james.downes@mq.edu.au magnetic and electronic structures for some materials have been reported [5,7,16,17], many open questions remain, and it was only quite recently that similar ex situ experiments have been demonstrated for HoN films [17]. The absence of reports regarding the magnetic properties of HoN thin films is remarkable given the known semiconducting behavior of HoN [17] and the net ferromagnetic behavior found in bulk form [9].…”

On the ferromagnetic ground state of SmN

“…In recent years, research into SmN has been driven by two main considerations; its potential for spintronic applications and its vanishingly small ferromagnetic moment. It is a member of the rare-earth nitride series, a group of materials owing their promise for spintronic applications to their status as intrinsic ferromagnetic semiconductors [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]. SmN is especially unique among the series, with a vanishingly small ordered moment arising from the near-cancellation of spin and orbital moments [4,5] fixed antiparallel by strong spin-orbit coupling.…”

YbN: An intrinsic semiconductor with antiferromagnetic exchange

“…Modern experimental studies have corroborated the earlier magnetic and crystallographic measurements, but have highlighted the fact that many of the early studies which found rare earth nitrides to be semimetallic were probably compromised by poor stoichiometry. It is now widely accepted that most of the series are in fact semiconductors [6,[11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20].…”