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Structural, optical, magnetic and electrical properties of Zn1−x Co x O thin films

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Abstract

Despite a considerable effort aiming at elucidating the nature of ferromagnetism in ZnO-based magnetic semiconductor, its origin still remains debatable. Although the observation of above room temperature ferromagnetism has been reported frequently in the literature by magnetometry measurement, so far there has been no report on correlated ferromagnetism in magnetic, optical and electrical measurements. In this paper, we investigate systematically the structural, optical, magnetic and electrical properties of Zn1−x Co x O:Al thin films prepared by sputtering with x ranging from 0 to 0.33. We show that correlated ferromagnetism is present only in samples with x > 0.25. In contrast, samples with x < 0.2 exhibit weak ferromagnetism only in magnetometry measurement which is absent in optical and electrical measurements. We demonstrate, by systematic electrical transport studies that carrier localization indeed occurs below 20–50 K for samples with x < 0.2; however, this does not lead to the formation of ferromagnetic phase in these samples with an electron concentration in the range of 6 × 1019 cm−3 ∼1 × 1020 cm−3. Detailed structural and optical transmission spectroscopy analyses revealed that the anomalous Hall effect observed in samples with x > 0.25 is due to the formation of secondary phases and Co clusters.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Koji Ando for the MCD measurement and detailed analysis of measurement results and JZ Wang for help with the cryostat measurements. The authors are also grateful to T. Andrearczyk and T. Dietl for their help on the interpretation of the MR results. The work at the National University of Singapore was supported by the A*-STAR under Grant No. R-398-000-020-305. The work at the University of Michigan was supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) under Grant No. DMR 0308012.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National University of Singapore, 4 Engineering Drive 3, Singapore, 117576, Singapore

    M. Tay & Y. H. Wu

  2. Data Storage Institute, 5 Engineering Drive 1, Singapore, 117608, Singapore

    M. Tay & G. C. Han

  3. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109-2136, USA

    Y. B. Chen & X. Q. Pan

  4. Institute of Materials Research and Engineering (IMRE), 3 Research Link, Singapore, 117602, Singapore

    S. J. Wang

  5. Singapore Synchrotron Light Source, Singapore, 117603, Singapore

    P. Yang

  6. Department of Physics, National University of Singapore, 2 Science Drive 3, Singapore, 117542, Singapore

    Y. P. Feng

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  1. M. Tay
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Correspondence to Y. H. Wu.

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Tay, M., Wu, Y.H., Han, G.C. et al. Structural, optical, magnetic and electrical properties of Zn1−x Co x O thin films. J Mater Sci: Mater Electron 20, 60–73 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10854-008-9607-3

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