Eur. Phys. J. B 53, 205-207 (2006)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2006-00361-0

The semiconductor-to-ferromagnetic-metal transition in FeSb₂

¹ Institute of Metal Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences-Ural Division, 620041 Yekaterinburg, Russia
² Ural State Technical University-UPI, 620002 Yekaterinburg, Russia
³ Institut für Theoretische Physik, ETH-Hönggerberg, 8050 Zürich, Switzerland

Corresponding author: ^a lukoyanov@optics.imp.uran.ru

Received: 2 April 2006
Revised: 18 July 2006
Published online: 6 October 2006

Abstract

We propose FeSb₂ to be a nearly ferromagnetic small gap semiconductor, hence a direct analog of FeSi. We find that despite different compositions and crystal structures, in the local density approximation with on-site Coulomb repulsion correction (LDA+U) method magnetic and semiconducting solutions for U=2.6 eV are energetically degenerate similar to the case of FeSi. For both FeSb₂ and FeSi (FeSi_1-xGe_x alloys) the underlying transition mechanism allows one to switch from a small gap semiconductor to a ferromagnetic metal with magnetic moment ≈1 μ_B per Fe ion with external magnetic field.