Effect of carbon on the magnetic properties of Dy-implanted GaN films

Abstract In this paper, samples were prepared by co-implanting Dy and carbon ions into c-plane (0001) GaN films and a subsequent rapid thermal annealing at 800 °C. The room temperature magnetic properties of Dy and C co-implanted GaN samples were investigated by experiments and theoretical calculations. Dy and C co-implanted GaN samples had the larger room temperature magnetic moment than that of the Dy-implanted GaN. The calculated results showed that the spin polarization of C-2p electrons leads to the local magnetic moment due to the hybridization between Dy-4f electron states and C-2p electron, which explains the enhancement of magnetic moment in co-implanted GaN samples. Our results suggest that co-implantation is a potential approach to enhance the room temperature ferromagnetism.