Polymer-assisted deposition and room-temperature ferromagnetism of amorphous Mn-doped gallium oxide films

In this work, amorphous Mn-doped gallium oxide (a-GMO) films are prepared by polymer-assisted deposition. The a-GMO films exhibit room-temperature ferromagnetism (RTFM) and their saturation magnetization (M-S) and coercive field (H-C) values are dependent on the Mn concentration. Interestingly, a lower Mn-doping concentration (3.1%) is sufficient to trigger the RTFM in the a-GMO films, in comparison with the previously-reported values in crystalline Mn-doped beta-Ga2O3 (11%) and gamma-Ga2O3 (7.0%). Furthermore, the a-GMO films exhibit higher M-S values than those crystalline Mn-doped Ga2O3 films at the medium doping levels between 10% and 20%. Further analysis shows that the enhancement of the ferromagnetism comes from the strong coupling between abundant oxygen vacancies (V(O)s) and Mn ions in the a-GMO films. Our results give insight to the RTFM of the a- GMO films and may be useful for the design, fabrication and application of spintronic materials based on gallium oxide.

Automated summary

In this study, amorphous Mn-doped gallium oxide films with room-temperature ferromagnetism were prepared by polymer-assisted deposition. The magnetic properties of the films depend on the concentration of Mn and the enhancement of ferromagnetism comes from the strong coupling between oxygen vacancies and Mn ions.