We report electron transport studies of a (001) GdN film grown on the square net presented by the (001) surface of LaAlO3, motivated by recent advances in epitaxial thin-film growth of several lanthanide nitrides. The film we have grown for the purpose is characterised by in-situ RHEED and ex-situ XRD and XRR to show the best crystallinity and smoothest surfaces we have accomplished to date. It shows a clear ferromagnetic transition at ∼70 K with a saturation magnetisation within uncertainly of 7 μB/Gd3+ ion, a remanence of 5 μB/Gd3+ ion and a coercive field of ∼5 mT. It is doped by ∼1% nitrogen vacancies that introduce ∼3×1020 cm−3 electrons into the conduction band. The resistivity shows transport in a conduction band doped to degeneracy by ∼0.01 electrons/formula unit with a residual resistance ratio of 2 and a Hall resistivity permitting easily-separated ordinary and anomalous Hall components. The mobility is an order of magnitude larger than we have found in earlier films.
@article{arxiv.2502.02005,
title = {Conductivity of high-mobility epitaxial GdN},
author = {Edward X. M. Trewick and B. J. Ruck and W. F. Holmes-Hewett and H. J. Trodahl},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2502.02005},
year = {2025}
}