Diluted magnetic semiconductor nanowires

An idea for simultaneously manipulating spin and charge in a single semiconductor medium has resulted in the development of diluted magnetic semiconductors (DMSs), which exhibits surprisingly room temperature ferromagnetic signatures despite having controversial ferromagnetic origin. However, achievement of truly room temperature ferromagnetism by carrier mediation is still the subject of intense research to develop the practical spin-based devices. Nanowires with one-dimensional nanostructure, which offers thermodynamically stable features and typically single crystalline and defect free, have a number of advantages over thin films with respect to studying ferromagnetism in DMSs. This review focuses primarily on our works on GaN-based DMS nanowires, i.e., Mn-doped GaN, Mn-doped AlGaN and Cu-doped GaN nanowires. These DMS nanowires have room temperature ferromagnetism by the local magnetic moment of doping elements that are in a divalent state and in tetrahedral coordination, thus substituting Ga in the wurtzite-type network structure of host materials. Importantly, our evidences indicate that the magnetism is originated from the ferromagnetic interaction driven by the carrier. These outcomes suggest that nanowires are ideal building blocks to address the magnetism in DMS due to their thermodynamic stability, single crystallinity, free of defects and free standing nature from substrate. Nanowires themselves are ideal building blocks for nanodevices and, thus, it would also be helpful in developing DMS-basedsp in devices.