First-principles studies of charged defect states in intrinsic ferromagnetic semiconductors: the case of monolayer CrI3

Abstract

Defects play significant roles in spin-current-related physical processes in intrinsic ferromagnetic semiconductors (FMSs), which are great promise for spintronics applications. However, current defect calculation methods cannot be used to investigate charged defects in FMSs due to the spin polarization of both the charged defect states and ionized carriers, which is not well treated in current defect calculation methods. In order to solve this problem, we propose a spin-distinguishable charge correction (SDCC) method that uses spin-polarized band edge charge density instead of spin-unpolarized uniform background charge density as the compensating charge for charged defects. We apply our method to study the defect properties of CrI _3 monolayer and find it can be doped n-type under the Cr-rich growth condition but difficult to be doped p-type. The SDCC method proposed here is generally suitable for all FMSs, which will be useful for the studies of defect properties of magnetic semiconductors.

Keywords

• ferromagnetic semiconductor
• defects
• spin-distinguishable charge correction
• CrI3 monolayer