Half-metallic ferromagnetic semiconductors of V- and Cr-doped CdTe studied from first-principles pseudopotential calculations

The electronic structure and the ferromagnetism of V- and Cr-doped zinc-blende semiconductor CdTe have been investigated by spin-polarized calculations with first-principles plane-wave pseudopotential method within the generalized gradient approximation for the exchange-correlation potential. We find that the V- and Cr-doped zinc-blende CdTe show half-metallic behavior with a total magnetic moment of 3.0 and 4.0μB per supercell, respectively. It may be useful in semiconductor spintronics and other applications.