Room-temperature local ferromagnetism and its nanoscale expansion in the ferromagnetic semiconductor Ge(1-x)Fex.

We investigate the local electronic structure and magnetic properties of the group-IV-based ferromagnetic semiconductor, Ge(1-x)Fex (GeFe), using soft X-ray magnetic circular dichroism. Our results show that the doped Fe 3d electrons are strongly hybridized with the Ge 4p states, and have a large orbital magnetic moment relative to the spin magnetic moment; i.e.