Impurity bands and the character of the electronic states in ferromagnetic GaMnAs layers

摘要

The interplay between disorder and spin polarization in a GaMnAs thin layer results into spin-polarized impurity hole bands. A figure of merit is defined to label the nature of the sample as metallic or nonmetallic. It is shown that samples with the highest figures of merit have a ratio between the extended hole density and the Mn concentration near 0.2, in agreement with the ratio of 0.1-0.25 known to occur among samples produced with the highest Curie temperatures. Both the nonmetal-to-metal and the metal-to-nonmetal transitions experimentally observed in the ferromagnetic regime are obtained as the Mn concentration increases.