Scanning tunneling microscopy reveals LiMnAs is a room temperature anti-ferromagnetic semiconductor

We performed scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy on a LiMnAs(001) thin film epitaxially grown on an InAs(001) substrate by molecular beam epitaxy. While the in situ cleavage exposed only the InAs(110) non-polar planes, the cleavage continued into the LiMnAs thin layer across several facets. We combined both topography and current mappings to confirm that the facets correspond to LiMnAs. By spectroscopy we show that LiMnAs has a band gap. The band gap evidenced in this study, combined with the known Neel temperature well above room temperature, confirms that LiMnAs is a promising candidate for exploring the concepts of high temperature semiconductor spintronics based on antiferromagnets. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.3693611]