Tuning the Magnetism in Boron-Doped Strontium Titanate

The magnetic and electronic properties of boron-doped SrTiO₃ have been studied by first-principles calculations. We found that the magnetic ground states of B-doped SrTiO₃ strongly depended on the dopant-dopant separation distance. As the dopant-dopant distance varied, the magnetic ground states of B-doped SrTiO₃ can have nonmagnetic, ferromagnetic or antiferromagnetic alignment. The structure with the smallest dopant-dopant separation exhibited the lowest total energy among all configurations considered and was characterized by dimer pairs due to strong attraction. Ferromagnetic coupling was observed to be stronger when the two adjacent B atoms aligned linearly along the B-Ti-B axis, which could be associated with their local bonding structures. Therefore, the symmetry of the local structure made an important contribution to the generation of a magnetic moment. Our study also demonstrated that the O-Ti-O unit was easier than the Ti-B-Ti unit to deform. The electronic properties of boron-doped SrTiO₃ tended to show semiconducting or insulating features when the dopant-dopant distance was less than 5 Å, which changed to metallic properties when the dopant-dopant distance was beyond 5 Å. Our calculated results indicated that it is possible to manipulate the magnetism and band gap via different dopant-dopant separations.