First-principles study of structural, electronic and magnetic properties of diluted magnetic semiconductor and superlattices based‏ on Cr-doped ZnS and ZnSe compounds in wurtzite-type crystal

Abstract

We performed first-principle calculations to investigate the structural, electronic, and magnetic properties of ZnS and ZnSe binary compounds, Zn0.5Cr0.5S and Zn0.5Cr0.5Se DMS alloys and (ZnS)2/Zn0.5Cr0.5Se and (ZnSe)2/Zn0.5Cr0.5S superlattices in the wurtzite structure using the full potential linear muffin–tin orbital  (FP-LMTO) method. Features such as lattice constant, modulus of compressibility and its first derivative, spin-polarized band structures, total and local or partial electronic densities of states and magnetic properties were calculated. The electronic structure shows that Zn0.5Cr0.5S and Zn0.5Cr0.5Se DMS alloys and (ZnS)2/Zn0.5Cr0.5Se and (ZnSe)2/Zn0.5Cr0.5S superlattices are half-metallic ferromagnetic with 100% complete spin polarization. The total magnetic moments calculated show the same integer value of 4 µB, which confirms the ferromagnetic half-metallic behavior of these compounds. We found that the ferromagnetic state is stabilized by the p-d exchange associated with the double-exchange mechanism. Zn0.5Cr0.5S and Zn0.5Cr0.5Se DMS alloys and (ZnS)2/Zn0.5Cr0.5Se and (ZnSe)2/Zn0.5Cr0.5S  superlattices are shown to be promising new candidates for applications in the fields of spintronics.