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Direct evidence for a half-metallic ferromagnet

Abstract

Half-metallic materials are characterized by the coexistence of metallic behaviour for one electron spin and insulating behaviour for the other. Thus, the electronic density of states is completely spin polarized at the Fermi level, and the conductivity is dominated by these metallic single-spin charge carriers. This exotic physical property could have a significant effect on technological applications related to magnetism and spin electronics. Some ferromagnetic systems, such as Heusler compounds1 and chromium dioxide2, have been predicted theoretically to be half-metallic. However, a half-metallic system has not been demonstrated directly and the predictions are still in doubt3,4. Here we report spin-resolved photoemission measurements of a ferromagnetic manganese perovskite, La0.7Sr0.3MnO3, which directly manifest the half-metallic nature well below the Curie temperature. For the majority spin, the photoemission spectrum clearly shows a metallic Fermi cut-off, whereas for the minority spin, it shows an insulating gap with disappearance of spectral weight at 0.6 eV binding energy.

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Figure 1: High-resolution photoemission spectra of a thin film of La 0.7Sr0.3MnO3, very near the Fermi energy (EF).
Figure 2: Spin-resolved photoemission spectra of a thin films of La 0.7Sr0.3MnO3 (asin Fig. 1), near the Fermi energy (EF).
Figure 3: Schematic energy diagrams and the Mn 3d spin alignments of the doped manganese perovskites at T TC and at T > TC.

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Acknowledgements

We thank J. Hastings for discussions. NSLS is supported by the US Department of Energy; the work in the University of Maryland was partially supported by the US Office of Naval Research.

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Correspondence to J.-H. Park.

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Park, JH., Vescovo, E., Kim, HJ. et al. Direct evidence for a half-metallic ferromagnet. Nature 392, 794–796 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/33883

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