Evidence for Half-Metallicity in n-type HgCr2Se4.

ABSTRACT

High quality HgCr2Se4 single crystals have been investigated by magnetization, electron transport, and Andreev reflection spectroscopy. In the ferromagnetic ground state, the saturation magnetic moment of each unit cell corresponds to an integer number of electron spins (3 µB/Cr3+), and the Hall effect measurements suggest n-type charge carriers. Spin polarizations as high as 97% were obtained from fits of the differential conductance spectra of HgCr2Se4/Pb junctions with the modified Blonder-Tinkham-Klapwijk theory. The temperature and bias-voltage dependencies of the subgap conductance are consistent with recent theoretical calculations based on spin active scatterings at a superconductor-half-metal interface. Our results suggest that n-HgCr2Se4 is a half-metal, in agreement with theoretical calculations that also predict undoped HgCr2Se4 is a magnetic Weyl semimetal.