Investigation of transport phenomenon and magnetic behavior of Fe doped In[formula omitted]O[formula omitted

Abstract

In this report the pursuance of Fe concentration on the structural, microstructural, optical, transport and magnetic properties of Indium Oxide (In2O3) have been systematically investigated. Rietveld refined X-ray diffraction, high resolution transmittance electron microscope (HRTEM), selected area electron diffraction (SAED) and Raman patterns substantiated the pure single phase of In2−xFexO3 (x = 0.0-0.4) nanocrystalline cubic bixbyite structure. The average crystallite (grain) size is found to be decreased from ∼ 38.3 to ∼ 27.2 nm with x = 0.0 to 0.4 Fe doping and average particle size of the samples for x = 0.0 and x = 0.2 are measured ∼ 49 nm and ∼ 41 nm respectively from TEM, while the optical band gap stays around ∼ 3.7 eV for each sample. The electrical resistivity is observed to increase with increase in Fe doping which is concomitant with the decrease in oxygen vacancy observed from X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) study and photoluminescence (PL). The samples with x = 0.0, 0.01, and 0.2 showed the normal semiconducting behavior and well fitted with thermal activation conduction band (TACB), nearest neighbor hopping (NNH) and Mott-variable range hopping (Mott-VRH) models. The magnetic behavior has a concurrence with the bound magnetic polaron (BMP) model in the vicinity of oxygen vacancies.