Co-, Fe-, Ni-doped and co-doped rutile GeO2: insights from ab-initio calculations

Rutile germanium oxide (rutile GeO2), a semiconductor, can act as a half-metallic compound and is a promising material for spintronic and optoelectronic applications. Calculations were performed using the Korringa-Kohn-Rostoker (KKR) approach and the coherent potential approximation (CPA), which were further combined with two approximations, the local density approximation (LDA) and the self-interaction corrected LDA approximation (LDA-SIC), to study the electronic structure of bulk rutile GeO2 doped and co-doped with three transition-metal impurities: Fe, Co, and Ni. The doping value was set to 10%, while the co-doping level was set to 5% for each impurity. The main findings of this work are: (1) a direct ultrawide bandgap of 4.80 eV is observed and the rutile GeO2 exhibits an N-type semiconducting property. (2) Doped and co-doped GeO2 acquire a magnetic behavior and exhibit half-metallicity. (3) The mechanism responsible for these properties is also studied. (4) The critical temperature can reach 334 K when GeO2 is doped with Fe, while it rises to 398 K when it is co-doped with Fe and Co. (5) The spin polarization can be improved by co-doping. It can be inferred that rutile GeO2 doped or co-doped with (Co, Fe) transition metals can be considered to be potential candidates for spintronic and optoelectronic applications.