Efficiently gate-tunable ferromagnetism in ferromagnetic semiconductor-Dirac semimetal p-n heterojunctions

Published

March 6, 2026

Author(s)

Emma Steinebronn, Saurav Islam, Abhinava Chatterjee, Bimal Neupane, Alexander Grutter, Christopher Jensen, Julie Borchers, Timothy Charlton, Wilson J. Yanez-Parreno, Juan Chamorro, Tanya Berry, Supriya Ghosh, K. A. Nivedith, K. A. Mkhoyan, Tyrel McQueen, Yuanxi Wang, Chaoxing Liu, Nitin Samarth

Abstract

We use molecular beam epitaxy to develop a gate tunable p-n heterojunction that interfaces a canonical Dirac semimetal, Cd3As2, and a ferromagnetic semiconductor, In1−xMnxAs, with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy. Measurements of the anomalous Hall effect in top-gated Cd3As2/In1−xMnxAs devices show that the ferromagnetic Curie temperature (TC) can be efficiently tuned using a modest gate voltage of ∼ 10 V, corresponding to a sensitivity to electric field (E) of ∆TC/∆E ∼ 10 K/MV/cm). The voltage tuning of TC saturates near the charge neutrality point of Cd3As2 and vanishes at positive gate voltage in appropriately designed heterostructures. This non-monotonic behavior cannot be explained solely by hole-mediated ferromagnetism in the In1−xMnxAs alone, suggesting an interaction between the Dirac semimetal and the ferromagnetic semiconductor. Our results identify Cd3As2/In1−xMnxAs heterojunctions as a potentially attractive platform for studying emergent phenomena arising from the interplay between broken symmetry, topology, and magnetism in a topological semimetal.

Citation

arvix

Pub Weblink

https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.05770

Pub Type

Websites

Citation

Steinebronn, E. , Islam, S. , Chatterjee, A. , Neupane, B. , Grutter, A. , Jensen, C. , Borchers, J. , Charlton, T. , Yanez-Parreno, W. , Chamorro, J. , Berry, T. , Ghosh, S. , Nivedith, K. , Mkhoyan, K. , McQueen, T. , Wang, Y. , Liu, C. and Samarth, N. (2026), Efficiently gate-tunable ferromagnetism in ferromagnetic semiconductor-Dirac semimetal p-n heterojunctions, arvix, [online], https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.05770 (Accessed March 14, 2026)