Unstrained Epitaxial Zn-Substituted Fe3O4 Films for Ferromagnetic Field-Effect Transistors

A field-effect transistor has been fabricated utilizing an epitaxial film of unstrained zinc-substituted magnetite (Fe3O4) as the active channel. A thin film of Fe2.5Zn0.5O4 was grown on a lattice-matched MgO(001) substrate by pulsed-laser deposition and covered by a parylene gate insulator to dope charge carriers by a field effect. The device showed a field-effect mobility of 1.2 ×10-2 cm2 V-1 s-1 at 300 K, which is higher by a factor of 15 than those of the devices with strained Fe2.5Zn0.5O4 channels on perovskite-type substrates. The enhanced response to the gate electric field is useful in exploring gate-tunable magnetism in magnetite.