Magnetic patterning of (Ga,Mn)As by hydrogen passivation

L. Thevenard (1) , Audrey Miard (1) , Laurent Vila (1) , Giancarlo Faini (1) , Aristide Lemaître (1) , Nicolas Vernier (2) , Jacques Ferré (2) , Stéphane Fusil (3)

1 LPN - Laboratoire de photonique et de nanostructures
2 LPS - Laboratoire de Physique des Solides
3 Laboratoire Albert Fert (ex-UMPhy Unité mixte de physique CNRS/Thales)

We present an original method to magnetically pattern thin layers of (Ga,Mn)As. It relies on local hydrogen passivation to significantly lower the hole density, and thereby locally suppress the carrier-mediated ferromagnetic phase. The sample surface is thus maintained continuous, and the minimal structure size is of about 200 nm. In micron-sized ferromagnetic dots fabricated by hydrogen passivation on perpendicularly magnetized layers, the switching fields can be maintained closer to the continuous film coercivity, compared to dots made by usual dry etch techniques.

Mots clés: GaMnAs; hydrogenation; magnetic patterning; diluted magnetic semiconductors

Domaines: Science des matériaux [cond-mat.mtrl-sci]

L. Thevenard, Audrey Miard, Laurent Vila, Giancarlo Faini, Aristide Lemaître, et al.. Magnetic patterning of (Ga,Mn)As by hydrogen passivation. 2007. ⟨hal-00154793⟩