Nitrogen vacancy effects on the ferromagnetism of Mn doped GaN films

The amorphous gallium nitride thin films doped with Mn were deposited by Laser assisted Molecular Beam Epitaxy (LMBE). After annealing at different NH₃ flow rates, the high-quality GaMnN crystalline films with different concentration of nitrogen vacancies (V _N) were obtained, which were confirmed by the X-ray diffraction spectroscopy and Raman measurements. The magnetic behaviors of these films were also obtained to investigate the effects of nitrogen vacancies. It indicates that V _N play a significant role in the origin of ferromagnetism. The stronger room-temperature ferromagnetism is given with the higher V _N concentration when it is not beyond a critical concentration. Moreover, from our M(T) curves and Raman analysis, the films present high resistivity. The magnetism of films with high resistivity varies with concentration of nitrogen vacancies, which can be explained by the bound magnetic polarons (BMP) theory.