The emerging field of spintronics would be dramatically boosted if room-temperature ferromagnetism could be added to semiconductor nanostructures that are compatible with silicon technology. Here, we report a high-TC (>400K) ferromagnetic phase of (Ge,Mn) epitaxial layer. The manganese content is 6%, and careful structural and chemical analyses show that the Mn distribution is strongly inhomogeneous: we observe eutectoid growth of well-defined Mn-rich nanocolumns surrounded by a Mn-poor matrix. The average diameter of these nanocolumns is 3nm and their spacing is 10nm. Their composition is close to Ge(2)Mn, which corresponds to an unknown germanium-rich phase, and they have a uniaxially elongated diamond structure. Their Curie temperature is higher than 400K. Magnetotransport reveals a pronounced anomalous Hall effect up to room temperature. A giant positive magnetoresistance is measured from 7,000% at 30K to 200% at 300K and 9T, with no evidence of saturation.

We present the results of a study of the magnetic properties of an array of 34-nm thick Co(100) epitaxial ring magnets, with inner and outer diameters of d(in) = 1.3 microm and d(out) = 1.6 microm, respectively. Magnetic measurements and micromagnetic simulations show that a two step switching process occurs at high fields, indicating the existence of two different stable states. In addition to the vortex state, which occurs at intermediate fields, we have identified a new bi-domain state, which we term the onion state, corresponding to opposite circulation of the magnetization in each half of the ring. The onion state is stable at remanence and undergoes a simple and well characterized nucleation free switching.

We present a magnetoresistance study of magnetization reversal and domain wall pinning effects in a mesoscopic narrow ferromagnetic Permalloy ring structure containing notches. The size and strength of the attractive pinning potential created by a notch is measured and the resistance minimum at remanence is found to occur when a single transverse domain wall is pinned at the notch, in agreement with the results of numerical simulations of the anisotropic magnetoresistance. When a field is applied in the direction corresponding to a potential well edge, a novel magnetic state with a very wide domain wall is stabilized, giving rise to a characteristic signature in the magnetoresistance at such angles.

Recent demonstrations of optically pumped lasers based on GeSn alloys put forward the prospect of efficient laser sources monolithically integrated on a Si photonic platform. For instance, GeSn layers with 12.5% of Sn were reported to lase at 2.5 µm wavelength up to 130 K. In this work, we report a longer emitted wavelength and a significant improvement in lasing temperature. The improvements resulted from the use of higher Sn content GeSn layers of optimized crystalline quality, grown on graded Sn content buffers using Reduced Pressure CVD. The fabricated GeSn micro-disks with 13% and 16% of Sn showed lasing operation at 2.6 µm and 3.1 µm wavelengths, respectively. For the longest wavelength (i.e 3.1 µm), lasing was demonstrated up to 180 K, with a threshold of 377 kW/cm² at 25 K.