The growth of thin-film metal nitride materials from elemental metal targets by plasma-assisted pulsed laser deposition (PLD) has been explored and analysed. A new UHV PLD growth system has been installed and assembled and its system elements were calibrated. A series of GaN thin films have been grown to calibrate the system. In-situ RHEED indicated that the films were single crystal and that growth proceeded in a three-dimensional fashion. SEM images showed heavy particulation of film surfaces that was not in evidence for later refractory metal nitride films. This may be connected to the fact that Ga targets were liquid while refractory metals were solid. Most GaN films were not continuous due to insufficient laser fluence. Continuous films did not exhibit photoluminescence. HfN films have been grown by PLD for the first time. Films grown have been shown to have high reflectivity in the visible region and low resistivity. These factors, along with their crystal structure, make them suitable candidates to be used as back-contacts in GaN LEDs and could also serve as buffer layers to enable the integration of GaN and Si technologies. Growth factors affecting the films’ final properties have been investigated. Nitrogen pressure, within the operating range of the plasma source, has been shown to have little effect on HfN films. Substrate temperature has been demonstrated to have more influence on the films’ properties, with 500 °C being established as optimum. ZrN films have also been grown by PLD. Early results indicated that they exhibit reflectivities 50 % ± 5 % lower than those of HfN. However, further growth and characterisation would be required in order to establish this as a fundamental property of ZrN as nitride targets were mostly used in ZrN production. Single-crystal epitaxial GdN and SmN films have been produced by PLD. This represents an improvement in the existing quality of GdN films reported in the literature, which are mostly polycrystalline. In the case of SmN, these are the first epitaxial films of this material to be grown. Film quality has been monitored in-situ by RHEED which has allowed growth to be tailored to produce ever-higher crystal quality. Post-growth analyses by collaborators was also of assistance in improving film growth. Substrate temperatures and nitrogen plasma parameters have been adjusted to find optimum values for each. In addition, laser fluence has been altered to minimise the presence of metal particulates in the films, which interfere with magnetic measurements carried out in analyses. Capping layers of Cr, YSZ or AlN have been deposited on the GdN and SmN prior to removal from vacuum to prevent their degradation upon exposure to atmospheric water vapour. The caps have been steadily improved over the course of this work, extending the lifetime of the nitride films in ambient. However, they remain volatile and this may persist since water vapour can enter the film at the edge regardless of capping quality. Optical transmission has shown an onset of absorption at 1.3 eV for GdN and 1.0 eV for SmN.

Die vorliegende Arbeit untersucht elektronische Korrelationseffekte in Realsubstanzen wie Europium-Sulphid (EuS) und Gadolinium-Nitrid (GdN). Es wird dazu eine Kombination von vielteilchentheoretischen Analysen der Spin-Austauschwechselwirkung zwischen itineranten Bandelektronen und lokalisierten 4f-Momenten, durchgefuehrt im Rahmen eines Mehr-Band-Kondo-Gitter-Modells (KLM), mit first-principles (T=0) Bandstrukturrechnungen vorgeschlagen. Die Ein-Teilchen-Energien (hopping-Integrale), die als Energie-Matrix in den Mehr-Band-Hamilton-Operator eingehen, werden einer TB-LMTO-ASA entnommen. Die interessierenden physikalischen Eigenschaften wie die Quasiteilchen-Spektraldichte und die Quasiteilchen-Zustandsdichte werden mit der Bewegu-ngsgleichungs-Methode Greencher Funktionen berechnet. Dazu wird fuer die gesuchte Mehr-Band-Selbstenergie der itinerantenLadungstraeger als Verallgemeinerung des sogenannten Interpolating Selfenergy Approach (ISA) ein Ansatz vorgeschlagen. Es stellt sich heraus, dassdas elektronische Anregungsspektrum durch die Austausch-Kopplung an das lokalisierte Momenten-System eine spektakulaere Temperaturabhaengigkeit aufweist, in Uebereinstimmung mit vorliegenden experimentellen Beobachtungen. Stark temperaturbestimmte Korrelationseffekte werden registriert, z.B. eine mit fallender Temperatur in der ferromagnetischen Phase auftretende Rotverschiebung der unteren Leitungsbandkante in guter Uebereinstimmung mit experimentellen Daten. Um die reinen f-Spin-Korrelationen zu beschreiben, wird eine modifizierte RKKY-Theorie fuer Mehr-Band-Systeme entwickelt, wobei durch Ausmitteln der elektronischen Freiheitsgrade das Mehr-Band KLM auf ein effektives Heisenberg-Modell abgebildet wird. Mit einer RPA-Theorie wird das effektive Heisenberg-Modell auf Aussagen zu zentralen magnetischen Eigenschaften wie Curie-Temperatur und Magnetisierungskurve analysiert. Durch gezielte Variation der Systemparameter wird die Brauchbarkeit des Modells getestet. / This dissertation deals with a combination of many-body evaluation of a spin exchange interaction between the itinerant electrons and localized 4f moments on a periodic lattice, i.e. within the so-called multi-band Kondo lattice model (KLM), and the T=0 first principles calculations in order to study the electronic correlation effects in real materials like Europium Sulphide (EuS) and Gadolinium Nitride (GdN).The single-particle ground state energy or hopping integral acting as an input in the many-body part is obtained using tight binding linear muffin-tin orbital within atomic sphere approximation (TB-LMTO-ASA) program and is a matrix in general. The physical properties of interest like the quasi-particle spectral density and quasi-particle density of states are calculated within the Green function theory and the equation of motion method. In order to do so the required multi-band self-energy of the band electrons istaken as an ansatz, i.e. the so-called interpolating self-energy approach (ISA). The electronic excitation spectrum gets a striking temperature dependence by its exchange coupling to the localized spin system. We observe very strong temperature dependent electronic correlation effects in GdN and the calculated red-shift of the lower conduction band is in close comparison with experiment. In order to determine the pure f-spin correlations, we develop the multi-band modified RKKY theory. The central idea of this theory beingto average out the itinerant electron degrees of freedom from the spin-exchange interaction and map the latter on to an effective Heisenberg model. Using this procedure, we determine the magnetic properties of the system like Curie temperature (within Random Phase Approximation) while calculating the chemical potential and magnetization within a self consistent scheme for various configurations of system parameters.