Growth of novel-diluted magnetic semiconducting material Ge1-xMnx and X-ray characterization by the maximum entropy method (MEM) and pair distribution function (PDF)

The growth and electronic structural studies of diluted magnetic semiconducting (DMS) materials Ge0.93Mn0.07 and Ge0.97Mn0.03 have been carried out. The melt growth technique has been used for growing these samples. Electronic structure has been studied using the maximum entropy method (MEM) using X-ray powder data sets. The covalent nature of bonding and the interaction between the atoms are clearly revealed by these studies. one-dimensional electron density profile along bonding and non-bonding directions have been plotted to understand the details of bonding very clearly. The mid-bond electron density between the atoms is 0.377 e/angstrom(3) for Ge0.93Mn0.07 and 0.455 e/angstrom(3) for Ge0.97Mn0.03. The local structure of these materials has been determined using the pair distribution function (PDF) analysis and the changes in the nearest neighbor distances are quantified and analyzed. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.