Magnetic susceptibility and electron spin resonance as probes of different magnetic species in MoS 3

Abstract

Magnetic susceptibility and electron spin resonance (ESR) measurements at 10 GHz are reported for amorphous MoS 3 between 5 K and 300 K. The densities of paramagnetic centers inferred from the two types of measurements differ by an order of magnitude (~1 and 0.1 mol%, respectively), demonstrating that the ESR measurements probe a subset of the magnetic species detected by the susceptibility measurements. The magnitudes of the susceptibility and ESR parameters place severe constraints on the possible origins of this phenomenon. These results are discussed in relation to previous work on similar materials, and the implications with regard to the detection and characterization of magnetic defects in other transition metal sulfides are pointed out.