High Curie temperature and high hole mobility in diluted magnetic semiconductors (B, Mn)X (X = N, P, As, Sb)

Abstract

Doping nonmagnetic semiconductors with magnetic impurities is a feasible way to obtain diluted magnetic semiconductors (DMSs). It is generally accepted that for the most extensively studied DMS, (Ga, Mn)As, its highest Curie temperature T$_{\text{C}}$ was achieved at 200 K with a Mn concentration of approximately 16% in experiments. A recent experiment reported record-breaking high electron and hole mobilities in the semiconductor BAs [Science 377, 437 (2022)]. Since BAs shares the same zinc-blende structure with GaAs, here we predict four DMSs (B, Mn)X (X = N, P, As, Sb) by density functional theory calculations. Our results indicate that a significantly higher T$_{\text{C}}$ in the range of 254 K to 300 K for (B, Mn)As with a Mn concentration of around 15.6%, and even higher T$_{\text{C}}$ values above the room temperature for (B, Mn)N and (B, Mn)P with a Mn concentration exceeding 12.5%. Furthermore, we have predicted a large hole mobility of 1561 cm$^{\text{2}}$V$^{\text{-1}}$s$^{\text{-1}}$ at 300 K for (B, Mn)As with a Mn concentration of about 3.7%, which is three orders of magnitude larger than the hole mobility of 4 cm$^{\text{2}}$V$^{\text{-1}}$s$^{\text{-1}}$ at 300 K observed in the experiment for (Ga, Mn)As. Our findings predict the emergence of a new family of DMS, (B, Mn)X, and are expected to stimulate both experimental and theoretical studies of the DMS with high T$_{\text{C}}$ and high mobilities