Epitaxial growth of Matched Metallic ErP 0.6 As 0.4 layers on GaAs

Successful growth of (001 )ErP0.6As0.4 single crystal film on (001) GaAs has been demonstrated. The epitaxial metallic layers reproducibly showed lattice mismatch below 5 10-4. This is, to our knowledge, the first report of a stable, epitaxial and lattice-matched metal/compound semiconductor heterostructure. The ErP0.6As0.4/n-GaAs diodes yielded excellent I-V characteristics with an ideality factor of 1.1 and barrier height of 0.88 eV. For a 240 A-thick film, metallic behavior was observed with resistivities of 25 and 86 μΩcm at 1.5 K and room temperature, respectively. As the other Er compounds ErP, ErAs, ErSb and ErSi2, ErP0.6As0.4 presents an abrupt drop in resistivity in the vicinity of the liquid helium temperature, due to a paramagnetic to antiferromagnetic phase transition.