Structural and magnetic properties of molecular beam epitaxy grown GaMnAs layers

Abstract

GaMnAs layers with Mn contents from 0.05% to 7% were grown by low temperature molecular beam epitaxy. At substrate temperatures lower than 300 °C and in this composition range a uniform ternary GaMnAs compound can be grown without MnAs precipitation. Reflection high energy electron diffraction intensity oscillations recorded during GaMnAs growth were used to calibrate the composition of the GaMnAs films with high accuracy (better than 0.1%). Films containing more than 1% Mn exhibit a ferromagnetic phase transition with Curie temperatures from a few up to 70 K depending on the composition and other growth parameters. In contrast to previous reports we have observed this transition also in the case of layers grown at very low substrate temperatures (below 200 °C).