Structural, mechanical, and magnetic properties of GaFe3N thin films

Using the density-functional theory, the structural, mechanical, and magnetic properties were investigated for different GaFe3N configurations: ferromagnetic, ferrimagnetic, paramagnetic, and nonmagnetic. Ferrimagnetic and high-spin ferromagnetic states exhibit the lowest energy and are the competing ground states as the total energy difference is 0.3 meV/atom only. All theoretically predicted values could be fully confirmed by experiments. For this, the authors synthesized phase pure, homogeneous, and continuous GaFe3N films by combinatorial reactive direct current magnetron sputtering. Despite the low melting point of gallium, the authors succeeded in the growth of GaFe3N films at a temperature of 500 degrees C. Those thin films exhibit a lattice parameter of 3.794 angstrom and an elastic modulus of 226620 GPa. Magnetic susceptibility measurements evidence a magnetic phase transitions at 8.060.1 K. The nearly saturated magnetic moment at 65 T is about 1.6 mu B/Fe and is close to the theoretically determined magnetic moment for a ferrimagnetic ordering (1.72 lB/Fe). (C) 2016 American Vacuum Society.