Room temperature ferromagnetism in thermally diffused Cr in GaN

Abstract

We report room temperature ferromagnetism in crystalline GaCrN prepared by Cr deposition and drive-in diffusion with Curie temperature much above 300 K. The Curie temperature increases with increasing active Cr concentration. Cr doped GaN acts as an n-type material with significant increase in electron carrier concentration due to the presence of Cr. Optical property of GaCrN is found to be very similar to GaN with an additional peak at 3.29 eV due to Cr. The hysteresis measurements show that the ferromagnetic ordering is maintained up to 300 K with no significant change in saturation magnetization.