Magnetoresistance of epitaxial GdN films

Abstract

We report magnetoresistance measurements on epitaxial films of the intrinsic ferromagnetic semiconductor GdN electron doped with ∼ 10 20 cm - 3 to ∼ 10 21 cm - 3. The magnetoresistance across the temperature range of 10-300 K is dominated by a reduction of spin-disorder scattering in the presence of a magnetic field, imposing a resistance reduction of 27% in a field of 8 T. We show that the magnetoresistance closely follows the magnetic disorder as signaled by the departure of the magnetization from its fully saturated value M s of 7 μ B / G d 3 +.