Engineering of high-temperature ferromagnetic Si1–Mn (x ≈ 0.5) alloyed films by pulsed laser deposition: Effect of laser fluence

Abstract Thin films of Si1−xMnx were deposited on Al2O3 substrate using pulsed laser deposition(PLD)technique employing time-of-flight separation of the ejected particles with different laser fluence (E = 3.8–7.6 J/cm2). Magnetic properties of these films reveal that the variation in the laser fluence has engineered several magnetic phases in Si1−xMnx films: high temperature (HT) ferromagnetic (FM) phase Si1−xMnx(x = 0.51–0.52) with uniformly distributed Si vacancies, and the low-temperature (LT) FM phases MnSi and Mn4Si7 with Curie temperature ≤40 K. At small fluence, the mesoscopic size MnSi and Mn4Si7 crystallites are formed in the upper layer of Si1−xMnx films with Si excess (x ≈ 0.4–0.5), yielding to inhomogeneous magnetic phase distribution along the film growth direction, while the high and optimal fluence has resulted in uniform distribution of the HT FM phase during the film growth. The XPS, magnetotransport and ferromagnetic resonance (FMR) measurements confirm the presence of several FM phases in the samples and the amplifying role of LT FM for films grown at E ≤ 4.4 J/cm2.