Material Design of Half-Metallic Zinc-Blende CrAs and the Synthesis by Molecular-Beam Epitaxy

Abstract

A new class of half-metallic ferromagnets has been found in the zinc-blende crystal structure. The previously nonexistent zinc-blende CrAs thin films have been synthesized on GaAs (001) substrates by molecular-beam epitaxy, and show a ferromagnetic behavior at room temperature. The zinc-blende CrAs has been designed by ab initio calculations based on the local spin-density approximation, and the calculation predicts the highly spin-polarized electronic band structure.