Structural and optical properties of sputtered gadolinium nitride films

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• 作者：E. Shalaan and H. Schmitt
• 关键词：Optical properties ; Optical constants ; Deposition by sputtering ; Nitride
• 刊名：Optics Communications
• 出版年：2006
• 出版时间：15 April 2006
• 年：2006
• 卷：260
• 期：2
• 页码：588-594
• 全文大小：454 K

文摘

Rare-earth (RE) materials have high magnetic moments and form a wide range of magnetic structures. There has been speculation in the literature that rare-earth nitrides may form half-metallic ferromagnetics. This is surprising because, based on a simple ionic model, trivalent rare-earth nitrides would be expected to be insulators with a similar electronic structure to the divalent rare-earth chalcogenides. However if it is the case that they are half-metallic or narrow gap insulators, then they have potential applications in spin-filtering devices. In the present investigation, We have deposited GdN films on glass substrate at room temperature by Ar/N₂ mixed gas plasma-radio frequency (rf) sputtering method. The structure and the complex optical properties as well as the energy gap of GdN thin films as a function of N₂ partial pressure are determined.