Lithographic engineering of anisotropies in (Ga,Mn)As

The focus of studies on ferromagnetic semiconductors is moving from material issues to device functionalities based on phenomena often associated with the anisotropy properties of these materials. This is driving a need for a method to locally control the anisotropy in order to allow the elaboration of devices. Here the authors present a method which provides patterning induced anisotropy that not only can be applied locally but also dominates over the intrinsic material anisotropy at all temperatures. (c) 2007 American Institute of Physics.