Abstract
ZnGdO epitaxial films prepared by reactive magnetron sputtering were studied using a combination of synchrotron based x-ray absorption spectroscopies, x-ray diffraction, and classical magnetometry. With nominal Gd concentrations of up to 16 only paramagnetism is found. Reducing the oxygen content in the sputter gas provokes phase separation, however, the samples remain paramagnetic. The experimental findings are corroborated by first-principles density-functional theory calculations. In all cases a paramagnetic behavior is found with Gd atomic moments comparable to the experiment. The structural degradation with increasing Gd concentration is consistently found by experiment as well as theory.
3 More- Received 7 March 2012
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.85.235203
©2012 American Physical Society