Growth and characterization of insulating ferromagnetic semiconductor (Al,Fe)Sb
We investigate the crystal structure, transport, and magnetic properties of Fe-doped ferromagnetic semiconductor (Al{sub 1−x},Fe{sub x})Sb thin films up to x = 14% grown by molecular beam epitaxy. All the samples show p-type conduction at room temperature and insulating behavior at low temperature. The (Al{sub 1−x},Fe{sub x})Sb thin films with x ≤ 10% maintain the zinc blende crystal structure of the host material AlSb. The (Al{sub 1−x},Fe{sub x})Sb thin film with x = 10% shows intrinsic ferromagnetism with a Curie temperature (T{sub C}) of 40 K. In the (Al{sub 1−x},Fe{sub x})Sb thin film with x = 14%, a sudden drop of the hole mobility and T{sub C} was observed, which may be due to the microscopic phase separation. The observation of ferromagnetism in (Al,Fe)Sb paves the way to realize a spin-filtering tunnel barrier that is compatible with well-established III-V semiconductor devices.