Structural and magnetic Properties of Mn, Co, Ni doped ZnO Nanocrystals

Abstract

ZnO is one of the most important semiconductor material for research. It is abundant, cost effective, non-toxic and also it is used in many bio-medical applications. The transition metal(TM) such as manganese (Mn), cobalt (Co) and nickel (Ni) doped zinc oxide (ZnO) nanocrystals are promising candidates for variety of practical application due to their spin of electron that lead to new magnetic, optical and transport properties. TM doped ZnO nanocrystals were synthesized using co-precipitation technique. The structural and magnetic properties were investigated using X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscope (SEM), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM) measurements. The XRD of Mn-doped ZnO nanocrystals shows hexagonal structure. The crystal size from the XRD was observed to be 10 nm. FTIR spectra shows strong absorption peaks between 200 - 600 cm^-1 as a characteristic bands due to the metal ions. The TM doped ZnO nanocrystals shows weak ferromagnetic properties at room temperature. It is well known that, ZnO has large band gap energy about 3.3ev which only absorb light within UV region. TM doped ZnO nanocrystals have very good photo catalytic activities, therefore in our further research work, we plan to investigate different optical properties of these materials