Existing semiconductor electronic and photonic devices utilize the charge on electrons and holes in order to perform their specific functionality such as signal processing or light emission. The relatively new field of semiconductor spintronics seeks, in addition, to exploit the spin of charge carriers in new generations of transistors, lasers and integrated magnetic sensors. The ability to control of spin injection, transport and detection leads to the potential for new classes of ultra-low power, high speed memory, logic and photonic devices. The utility of such devices depends on the availability of materials with practical (>300 K) magnetic ordering temperatures. In this paper, we summarize recent progress in dilute magnetic semiconductors (DMS) such as (Ga, Mn)N, (Ga, Mn)P, (Zn, Mn)O and (Zn, Mn)SiGeN 2 exhibiting room temperature ferromagnetism, the origins of the magnetism and its potential applications in novel devices such as spin-polarized light emitters and spin field effect transistors. #

Many ultrafast solid phase transitions are treated as chemical reactions that transform the structures between two different unit cells along a reaction coordinate, but this neglects the role of disorder. Although ultrafast diffraction provides insights into atomic dynamics during such transformations, diffraction alone probes an averaged unit cell and is less sensitive to randomness in the transition pathway. Using total scattering of femtosecond x-ray pulses, we show that atomic disordering in photoexcited vanadium dioxide (VO2) is central to the transition mechanism and that, after photoexcitation, the system explores a large volume of phase space on a time scale comparable to that of a single phonon oscillation. These results overturn the current understanding of an archetypal ultrafast phase transition and provide new microscopic insights into rapid evolution toward equilibrium in photoexcited matter.

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The enthalpies of formation for the compounds (RE3+)PO4, (where RE = Sc, Y, La–Nd, Sm–Lu) were determined by oxide-melt solution calorimetry. Calorimetric measurements were performed in a Calvet-type twin microcalorimeter in sodium molybdate (3Na2O · 4MoO3) and lead borate (2PbO · 2B2O3) solvents at 975 K. The experiments were carried out using both powdered single crystals grown by a flux technique and powders synthesized by precipitation. Formation enthalpies were derived from the drop-solution enthalpies for (RE)PO4, RE oxides, and P2O5. Enthalpies of formation for the (RE)PO4 compounds with respect to the oxides at 298 K become more negative with increasing RE3+ ionic radius; i.e., in going from ScPO4 (−209.8 ± 1.0 kJ/mol), to LuPO4 (−263.9 ± 1.9 kJ/mol), to LaPO4 (−321.4 ± 1.6 kJ/mol). From structural considerations, a similar trend is expected for the isostructural RE vanadates and arsenates, as well as for the tetravalent actinide orthosilicates.

Raman spectra of anhydrous crystalline samples of all of the lanthanide orthophosphates (with the exception of PmP04) have been obtained. These data were interpreted in a systematic manner based on the known structures of these compounds. Assignments and correlations have been made for many of the observed bands.