No Arabic abstract
We have studied the electronic structure of Zn$_{0.9}$Fe$_{0.1}$O nano-particles, which have been reported to show ferromagnetism at room temperature, by x-ray photoemission spectroscopy (XPS), resonant photoemission spectroscopy (RPES), x-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) and x-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD). From the experimental and cluster-model calculation results, we find that Fe atoms are predominantly in the Fe$^{3+}$ ionic state with mixture of a small amount of Fe$^{2+}$ and that Fe$^{3+}$ ions are dominant in the surface region of the nano-particles. It is shown that the room temperature ferromagnetism in the Zn$_{0.9}$Fe$_{0.1}$O nano-particles is primarily originated from the antiferromagnetic coupling between unequal amounts of Fe$^{3+}$ ions occupying two sets of nonequivalent positions in the region of the XMCD probing depth of $sim$ 2-3 nm.
We report on x-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) and x-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD) studies of the paramagnetic (Mn,Co)-co-doped ZnO and ferromagnetic (Fe,Co)-co-doped ZnO nano-particles. Both the surface-sensitive total-electron-yield mode and the bulk-sensitive total-fluorescence-yield mode have been employed to extract the valence and spin states of the surface and inner core regions of the nano-particles. XAS spectra reveal that significant part of the doped Mn and Co atoms are found in the trivalent and tetravalent state in particular in the surface region while majority of Fe atoms are found in the trivalent state both in the inner core region and surface region. The XMCD spectra show that the Fe$^{3+}$ ions in the surface region give rise to the ferromagnetism while both the Co and Mn ions in the surface region show only paramagnetic behaviors. The transition-metal atoms in the inner core region do not show magnetic signals, meaning that they are antiferromagnetically coupled. The present result combined with the previous results on transition-metal-doped ZnO nano-particles and nano-wires suggest that doped holes, probably due to Zn vacancy formation at the surfaces of the nano-particles and nano-wires, rather than doped electrons are involved in the occurrence of ferromagnetism in these systems.
The electronic structure of Li-doped Ni$_{1-x}$Fe$_x$O has been investigated using photoemission spectroscopy (PES) and x-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS). The Ni $2p$ core-level PES and XAS spectra were not changed by Li doping. In contrast, the Fe$^{3+}$ intensity increased with Li doping relative to the Fe$^{2+}$ intensity. However, the increase of Fe$^{3+}$ is only $sim 5%$ of the doped Li content, suggesting that most of the doped holes enter the O $2p$ and/or the charge-transferred configuration Ni $3d^8underline{L}$. The Fe 3d partial density of states and the host valence-band emission near valence-band maximum increased with Li content, consistent with the increase of electrical conductivity. Based on these findings, percolation of bound magnetic polarons is proposed as an origin of the ferromagnetic behavior.
The electronic structure of the Cr ions in the diluted ferromagnetic semiconductor Zn$_{1-x}$Cr$_x$Te ($x=0.03$ and 0.15) thin films has been investigated using x-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD) and photoemission spectroscopy (PES). Magnetic-field ($H$) and temperature ($T$) dependences of the Cr $2p$ XMCD spectra well correspond to the magnetization measured by a SQUID magnetometer. The line shape of the Cr $2p$ XMCD spectra is independent of $H$, $T$, and $x$, indicating that the ferromagnetism is originated from the same electronic states of the Cr ion. Cluster-model analysis indicates that although there are two or more kinds of Cr ions in the Zn$_{1-x}$Cr$_x$Te samples, the ferromagnetic XMCD signal is originated from Cr ions substituted for the Zn site. The Cr 3d partial density of states extracted using Cr $2p to 3d$ resonant PES shows a broad feature near the top of the valence band, suggesting strong $s$,$p$-$d$ hybridization. No density of states is detected at the Fermi level, consistent with their insulating behavior. Based on these findings, we conclude that double exchange mechanism cannot explain the ferromagnetism in Zn$_{1-x}$Cr$_{x}$Te.
Here we report the synthesis of a bulk oxide diluted magnetic semiconductor (DMS) system La1-xSrxCu0.925Mn0.075SO (x=0, 0.025, 0.05, 0.075, and 0.1). As a wide band gap p-type oxide semiconductor, LaCuSO satisfies all the conditions forecasted theoretically to be a room temperature DMS. The Curie temperature (TC) is around 200K as x>0.05, which is among the highest TC record of known bulk DMS materials up to now. The system provides a rare example of oxide DMS system with p-type conduction, which is important for formation of high temperature spintronic devices.
High-quality (001)-oriented (pseudo-cubic notation) ferromagnetic YTiO$_3$ thin films were epitaxially synthesized in a layer-by-layer way by pulsed laser deposition. Structural, magnetic and electronic properties were characterized by reflection-high-energy-electron-diffraction, X-ray diffraction, vibrating sample magnetometry, and element-resolved resonant soft X-ray absorption spectroscopy. To reveal ferromagnetism of the constituent titanium ions, X-ray magnetic circular dichroism spectroscopy was carried out using four detection modes probing complimentary spatial scale, which overcomes a challenge of probing ferromagnetic titanium with pure Ti3+(3d$^1$). Our work provides a pathway to distinguish between the roles of titanium and A-site magnetic rare-earth cations in determining the magnetism in rare-earth titanates thin films and heterostructures.