ISIS Neutron and Muon Source Data Journal

This is a page describing data taken during an experiment at the ISIS Neutron and Muon Source. Information about the ISIS Neutron and Muon Source can be found at https://www.isis.stfc.ac.uk.


muSR study of the percolation process in a new dilute magnetic semiconductor series

Abstract: Doping electric charges into semiconductors drastically changes their electronic properties. Whether dopinga small number of magnetic spins results in ferromagnetism in nonmagnetic semiconductors has been a vigorously debated topic for more than 30 years, largely due to the lack of evidence for an intrinsicferromagnetic transition in so-called dilute magnetic semiconductors. However, we have just discovered an intrinsic ferromagnetic transition with unambiguous evidence in the semiconductor (Sr1-xRx)SiO3 doped with rare-earth magnetic ions R, which entered the Sr site in the lattice. Surprisingly, partial ferromagnetic behavior can be induced at an ultralow doping concentration, with the transition temperature obeying an exponential function with the doping concentration. At doping higher than 0.1%, the transition temperature is almost independent of the doping concentration and shows evidence of percolation into a long-range orde. In the sample doped with 5%Dy, long-range ferromagnetic order, which was never witnessed in any previous dilute magnetic semiconductors, was clearly observed in muon spin spectroscopy. We have also obtained other evidence suggesting a magnetic polaron picture for the unexpected magnetism. It is of ultimate interest to reveal the percolation process in this unexpected dilute magnet. We thus propose to investigate the percolation process using the muon beam line at ARGUS.

Principal Investigator: Professor Xu-Guang Zheng
Local Contact: Dr Adam Berlie
Experimenter: Dr Ichihiro Yamauchi
Local Contact: Dr Koji Yokoyama

DOI: 10.5286/ISIS.E.RB2510182

ISIS Experiment Number: RB2510182

Part DOI Instrument Public release date Download Link
10.5286/ISIS.E.RB2510182-1 ARGUS 28 March 2028 Download

Publisher: STFC ISIS Neutron and Muon Source

Data format: RAW/Nexus
Select the data format above to find out more about it.

Data Citation

The recommended format for citing this dataset in a research publication is as:
[author], [date], [title], [publisher], [doi]

For Example:
Professor Xu-Guang Zheng et al; (2025): muSR study of the percolation process in a new dilute magnetic semiconductor series, STFC ISIS Neutron and Muon Source, https://doi.org/10.5286/ISIS.E.RB2510182

Data is released under the CC-BY-4.0 license.



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