Zinc-Blende Structure of CrTe Epilayers Grown on GaAs

Recently, there is an increased interest in half-metallic materials with the zinc-blende structure for the purpose of injecting spin-polarised electrons into zinc-blende semiconductor substrates. Since most of the known half-metallic systems do not have the zinc blende structure and most of the solids with the zinc-blende structure are not half-metals, the focus is on finding materials which are more stable in other structures, but would exhibit half-metallic properties when synthesized as metastable zinc-blende structures. Some of these materials have already been explored such as MnAs, CrAs and CrSb, but their synthesis have been possible only in the form of nano-dots, ultra thin films or ultra thin films in multilayers.