Control of transport and magnetism in ferromagnetic semiconducting superlattices through growth conditions and chemical surface effects

Within the emerging area of spintronics, magnetic semiconductors have been the subject of many recent studies. Advances in magnetizing traditional semiconductors like GaAs, through the introduction of Mn, have been the focus of many experiments. Recently, studies have focused on ferromagnetic semiconducting superlattices, where half-monolayer MnAs planes are separated by GaAs spacers. These structures have only recently been grown, and it is of particular interest to discover the properties of this material, and if it can be used in future spintronic devices.; We have studied changes in the magnetic and transport properties of ferromagnetic semiconducting superlattices as a function of temperature, superlattice period and substrate growth temperature. We have measured the resistance, Hall resistance and magnetoresistance over a wide range of temperatures. We see that as the period of the superlattice increases, the per-layer resistance and the Curie temperature reach saturation values at approximately the same value. We also find that electrical transport is predominantly through hopping conduction. The anomalous Hall effect dominates the Hall resistance. With the period fixed, we vary the substrate temperature during growth and observe that higher substrate temperatures lead to less resistive samples. Also, for samples with high substrate temperatures, we find that the anomalous Hall coefficient can flip in sign.; We also observe changes in the magnetic anisotropy as we vary the period of the superlattice and the substrate temperature. We observe this change with planar Hall effect as well as SQUID magnetometry measurements. Samples with short periods show cubic magnetic anisotropy whereas samples with larger period show uniaxial anisotropy. We then determine the anisotropy constants for this material. We also see that the switching is dominated by domain pinning processes.; Finally, we are able to change the Curie temperature of ½ ML MnAs planes in GaAs through the addition of chemical adsorbates. We find that we can reduce the Curie temperature by over 50 K. The reduction is linked to how well ordered the adsorbate is.