The European Physical Journal (EPJ) is a series of peer-reviewed
journals covering the whole spectrum of physics and related
interdisciplinary subjects. EPJ is committed to high scientific
quality in publishing and is indexed in all main citation
databases. A new study discusses the electric and magnetic
characteristics of a material which could be used in spintronics
Materials belonging to the family of dilute magnetic oxides
(DMOs) — an oxide-based variant of the dilute magnetic
semiconductors — are good candidates for spintronics
applications. This is the object of study for Davide Sangalli of
the Microelectronics and Microsystems Institute (IMM) at the
National Research Council (CNR), in Agrate Brianza, Italy, and
colleagues. They recently explored the effect of iron (Fe)
doping on thin films of a material called zirconia (ZrO2 oxide).
For the first time, the authors bridged the gap between the
theoretical predictions and the experimental measurements of
this material, in a paper just published in EPJ B.