New semiconductor materials for magnetoelectronics at room temperature

Most of the semiconductor materials are diamagnetic by nature and therefore cannot take active part in the operation of the magneto electronic devices. In order to enable them to be useful for such devices a recent effort has been made to develop diluted magnetic semiconductors (DMS) in which small quantity of magnetic ion is introduced into normal semiconductors. The first known such DMS are II-VI and III-V semiconductors diluted with magnetic ions like Mn, Fe, Co, Ni, etc. Most of these DMS exhibit very high electron and hole mobility and thus useful for high speed electronic devices. The recent DMS materials reported are (CdMn)Te, (GaMn)As, (GaMn)Sb, ZnMn(or Co)O, TiMn(or Co)O etc. They have been produced as thin films by MBE and other methods. This paper will discuss the details of the growth and properties of the DMS materials and some of their applications.