Anomalous hysteretic Hall effect in a ferromagnetic, Mn-rich, amorphous Ge:Mn nano-network

The read out of the magnetization state in magnetic semiconductors by electrical Hall resistance measurements makes it possible to use ferromagnetic semiconductors in nonvolatile memories. In a previous work [1], we fabricated ferromagnetic Ge:Mn by Mn ion implantation and pulsed laser annealing (PLA) and observed hysteretic Hall resistance below 10 K. By applying different PLA conditions we fabricated a percolating, Mn-rich, amorphous Ge:Mn nano-network with hysteretic Hall resistance up to 30K. This nano-network is embedded in crystalline Ge:Mn between 5 nm and 40 nm under the sample surface.
We applied chemical and physical etching to confirm the contribution of the nano-network to the magnetic properties. The nano-network has a significant influence on the correlation between magnetism and anomalous Hall resistance. In the future such nano-networks may be used to spin-polarize free charge carriers in semiconductors at room temperature.
[1] S. Zhou et al., Phys. Rev. B 81, 165204 (2010)