Paper detail

Reconsidering the possibility of room temperature ferromagnetism in Mn doped Zirconium oxide

The possibility to induce long range ferromagnetic order by doping oxides with transition metal ions has become a very exciting challenge in the last decade. Theoretically, it has been claimed that Mn doped ZrO$_2$ could be a very promising spintronic candidate and that high critical temperatures could be already achieved even for a low Mn concentration. Some experiments have reported room temperature ferromagnetism (RT-FM) whilst some others only paramagnetism. When observed, the nature of RT-FM appears to be controversial and not clearly understood. In this study, we propose to clarify and shed light on some of theses existing issues. A detailed study of the critical temperatures and low energy magnetic excitations in Mn doped ZrO$_2$ is performed. We show that the Curie temperatures were largely overestimated previously, due to the inadequate treatment of both thermal and transverse fluctuations, and disorder. It appears that the Mn-Mn couplings can not explain the observed RT-FM. We argue, that this can be attributed to the interaction between large moments induced in the vicinity of the manganese. This is similar to the non-magnetic defect induced ferromagnetism reported in oxides, semiconductors and graphene/graphite.