Intrinsic room temperature ferromagnetism in boron-doped ZnO

Abstract

We report room temperature ferromagnetism in boron-doped ZnO both experimentally and theoretically. The single phase Zn1−xBxO films deposited under high oxygen pressure by pulsed laser deposition show ferromagnetic behavior at room temperature. The saturation magnetization increases monotonically from 0 to 1.5 emu/cm3 with the increasing boron component x from 0% to 6.8%. The first-principles calculations demonstrate that the ferromagnetism in the B-doped ZnO originates from the induced magnetic moment of oxygen atoms in the nearest neighbor sites to B–Zn vacancy pairs. The calculated total magnetic moment shows an increasing trend with the boron component which is consistent with experiment.