Magnetic semiconductors with coupled magnetic and electronic properties are of high technological and fundamental importance. Rare-earth elements can be used to introduce magnetic moments associated with the uncompensated spin of 4f-electrons into the semiconductor hosts. The luminescence produced by rare-earth doped semiconductors also attracts considerable interest due to the possibility of electrical excitation of characteristic sharp emission lines from intra 4f-shell transitions. Recently, electroluminescence of Eu-doped GaN in current-injection mode was demonstrated in p-n junction diode structures grown by organometallic vapour phase epitaxy. Unlike most other trivalent rare-earth ions, Eu3+ ions possess no magnetic moment in the ground state. Here we report the detection of an induced magnetic moment of Eu3+ ions in GaN which is associated with the 7F2 final state of 5D0→7F2 optical transitions emitting at 622 nm. The prospect of controlling magnetic moments electrically or optically will lead to the development of novel magneto-optic devices.

A small pixel, spectroscopic, CdTe detector has been developed at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) for X-ray imaging applications. The detector consists of 80 × 80 pixels on a 250 µm pitch with 50 µm inter-pixel spacing. Measurements with an 241 Am γ-source demonstrated that 96% of all pixels have a FWHM of better than 1 keV while the majority of the remaining pixels have FWHM of less than 4 keV. Using the Diamond Light Source synchrotron, a 10 µm collimated beam of monochromatic 20 keV X-rays has been used to map the spatial variation in the detector response and the effects of charge sharing corrections on detector efficiency and resolution. The mapping measurements revealed the presence of inclusions in the detector and quantified their effect on the spectroscopic resolution of pixels.

Semi-insulating wafers of GaAs material with a thickness of 500 µm have been compensated with chromium by Tomsk State University. Initial measurements have shown the material to have high resistivity (3 × 10 9 Ω cm) and tests with pixel detectors on a 250 µm pitch produced uniform spectroscopic performance across an 80 × 80 pixel array. At present, there is a lack of detectors that are capable of operating at high X-ray fluxes (> 10 8 photons s −1 mm −2 ) in the energy range 5-50 keV. Under these conditions, the poor stopping power of silicon, as well as issues with radiation hardness, severely degrade the performance of traditional detectors. While high-Z materials such as CdTe and CdZnTe may have much greater stopping power, the formation of space charge within these detectors degrades detector performance. Initial measurements made with GaAs:Cr detectors suggest that many of its material properties make it suitable for these challenging conditions. In this paper the radiation hardness of the GaAs:Cr material has been measured on the B16 beam line at the Diamond Light Source synchrotron. Small pixel detectors were bonded to the STFC Hexitec ASIC and were irradiated with 3 × 10 8 photons s −1 mm −2 monochromatic 12 keV X-rays up to a maximum dose of 0.6 MGy. Measurements of the spectroscopic performance before and after irradiation have been used to assess the extent of the radiation damage.

Epitaxial transparent oxide NixMg1−xO (0 ≤ x ≤ 1) thin films were grown on MgO(100) substrates by pulsed laser deposition. High-resolution synchrotron X-ray diffraction and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy analysis indicate that the thin films are compositionally and structurally homogeneous, forming a completely miscible solid solution. Nevertheless, the composition dependence of the NixMg1−xO optical band gap shows a strong non-parabolic bowing with a discontinuity at dilute NiO concentrations of x < 0.037. Density functional calculations of the NixMg1−xO band structure and the density of states demonstrate that deep Ni 3d levels are introduced into the MgO band gap, which significantly reduce the fundamental gap as confirmed by optical absorption spectra. These states broaden into a Ni 3d-derived conduction band for x > 0.074 and account for the anomalously large band gap narrowing in the NixMg1−xO solid solution system.