Acoustic shock wave recovery experiments on cubic zinc sulfide nanoparticles for electrical and magnetic switches applications

Abstract

In the present work, we report acoustic shock wave recovery experimental findings on cubic zinc sulfide nanoparticles (ZnS NPs) with crystallographic, electronic and magnetic phase stability. The acquired X-ray diffraction (XRD) and magnetic results show that the ZnS NPs have a stable cubic crystalline structure, and however, owing to the reduction in defects, they result in reversible magnetic phase transitions from the weak-ferromagnetic to mixed-diamagnetic/ferromagnetic states at the corresponding 50 and 150 shocked conditions. The values of saturation magnetization are determined as 0.249, 0.052, 0.249 and 0.049 emu/g for 0, 50, 100 and 150 shocked conditions, respectively. Accordingly, the magnitude of the calculated band gap energies for 0, 50, 100 and 150 shocked conditions are identified to be 3.70, 3.85, 3.69, and 3.85 eV, respectively. Furthermore, the double peaks at corresponding positions of 161.67 (S 2p3/2) and 162.97 (S 2p1/2) of the X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) are converted into the singlet peak at 162.23 (S 2p1/2), demonstrating the reduction of the defect density at the 50-shocked condition. Finally, the structure-property relationship of cubic ZnS NPs and magnetic properties with respect to the exposed shocks are discussed in detail. Due to the switchable optical and magnetic properties by the number of shock pulses, cubic zinc sulfide nanoparticles can be suitable for spintronics devices and magnetically switchable applications.