Abstract
Diluted Magnetic Semiconductors (DMS) form a new class of magnetic materials, which fill the gap between ferromagnets and semiconductors. In the early literature these DMS were often named semimagnetic semiconductors, because they are midway between non magnetic and magnetic materials.DMS are semiconductor compounds (A1−xMxB) in which a fraction x of the cations is substituted by magnetic impurities , thereby introducing magnetic properties into the host semiconductor AB. This makes a great difference with semiconducting ferromagnets, i.e., ferromagnetic materials exhibiting semiconductor-like transport properties, which have been known for some time (see a review in [2]). A DMS is expected to retain most of its classical semiconducting properties, and to offer the opportunity of a full integration into heterostructures, including heterostructures with the host material. The great challenge and ultimate goal of the research in this field is to obtain DMS ferromagnetic at room temperature, which can be integrated in semiconductor heterostructures for electronic or optoelectron c applications. This is one of the key issue for the advent of spintronics devices. Among the principal DMS families, II-VI and, to a less extent, III-V based DMS, with Mn as the magnetic impurity, are best understood. For this reason the present chapter will be mainly based on these compounds to introduce the well established basic physics of DMS. More details can be found in review papers such as [3–5]. Some issues related to work in progress, generally on novel materials, will be also discussed but only briefly.