Magnetic and microstructural properties of sputter deposited Cr-doped aluminum nitride thin films on silicon substrates

In this paper, we report on the microstructural and magnetic properties of CrxAl1−xN thin films with Cr concentrations ranging up to x = (8.5 ± 0.5) at. %. The thin films are sputter deposited on silicon substrates and exhibit a wurtzite type microstructure verified by X-ray diffraction measurements. A vibrating sample magnetometer based measurement equipment is used to investigate magnetic properties of the Cr doped thin films in a temperature range of T = 10 K–300 K, revealing a paramagnetic behavior. With increasing temperature, the temperature independent diamagnetic contribution of the substrate material dominates the overall response characteristics. No room temperature ferromagnetism is observed for all samples investigated.