Investigation on structural and magneto-optical properties of electrospun Co-doped SnO2 hollow nanofibers

Abstract

Pure and Co-doped SnO2 hollow nanofibers were successfully synthesized by electrospinning technique. The structures of as spun and hollow nanofibers were characterized with X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscope (SEM). We observe from the SEM images the formation of well-defined hollow nanofiber network with coarse morphology consisting of fine nanograins. The optical properties of Co doped SnO2 nanofiber was studied with the UV–Vis spectroscopy and photoluminescence. The strong emission band at violet-blue region for all the samples with different intensities confirm the presence of defects related luminescent centres in Co-doped SnO2 nanofibers. The magnetic measurement reveals that Co-doped SnO2 hollow nanofibers show room temperature ferromagnetism at the low field strengths. This may be due to the exchange interaction between the local magnetic moment of Co2+ ions and bound magnetic polarons (BMPs) of SnO2.