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Room-temperature ferromagnetism is observed in reduced rutile TiO2−δ by Fe doping. The epitaxial films grown by pulsed-laser deposition are carefully examined by x-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy, and magnetic and transport measurements. The films exhibit the extraordinary Hall-effect and thin-film magnetic shape anisotropy. The magnetic moments and anticipated Curie temperatures of the films rule out Fe particles, iron oxides, and Ti–Fe oxides as possible sources for the observed magnetic signals. The carriers of the Fe-doped reduced rutile are p-type, with a carrier density of 1×1022/cm3. This room-temperature dilute magnetic semiconductor should find potential applications in spintronics.

Gd-doped HfO2 films deposited on silicon substrates undergo a crystallographic change from monoclinic to fluorite (cubic) phase with increasing Gd concentrations. The crystallographic phase change is accompanied by a small increase in the valence bandwidth and in the apparent band offset in the surface region. Electrical measurements show pronounced rectification properties for lightly doped Gd:HfO2 films on p-Si and for heavily-doped Gd:HfO2 films on n-Si, suggesting a crossover from n-type to p-type behavior with increasing doping level.

Epitaxial Cr-doped Ti2O3 films show giant negative magnetoresistance up to –365% at 2 K. The resistivity of the doped samples follows the behavior expected of spin (magnetic) polarons at low temperature. Namely, rho= rho0 exp(T0/T)p, where p = 0.5 in zero field. A large applied field quenches the spin polarons and p is reduced to 0.25 expected for lattice polarons. The formation of spin polarons is an indication of strong exchange coupling between the magnetic ions and holes in the system.