IV-VI Ferromagnetic Semiconductors — Recent Studies

In some IV-VI semimagnetic semiconductors, the RKKY interaction can dominate over the standard d-d superexchange and become the driving mechanism for ion-ion coupling. In effect, for low hole concentrations the Mn ion system is in a paramagnetic phase, whereas for higher ones it reveals typical ferromagnetic behavior. In this paper, recent work on IV-VI ferromagnetic (SnMnTe, PbSnMnTe and GeMnTe) systems will be presented. In particular, the influence of the presence of two types of magnetic ions (transition metal: Mn and rare earth metal: Eu or Er) incorporated into a semiconductor matrix on magnetic properties of resultant semimagnetic semiconductor will be described.