Pulsed Laser Deposition and Fabrication of CoO/ZnO and CoO/TiO<sub>2</sub> Nano-Hybrid Thin Film

Abstract

Nano-hybrid CoO/ZnO and CoO/TiO2 thin films are interesting magnetic semiconductors, which may be the potential candidates in spintronic devices. We report a study of the morphology and properties of highly crystalline and textured CoO/ZnO and CoO/TiO2 nanohybrid thin films grown on Al2O3 (006) substrates by pulse laser deposition (PLD). The structural and magnetic properties of the deposited films were analyzed by AFM, SEM, XRD and AGM. Highly crystalline CoO/ZnO and CoO/TiO2 films were formed on single crystal Al2O3 substrates at 1x10-4 Torr oxygen partial pressure. It has been found that with a fine tune of the deposition conditions and heat treatment, the films can have highly crystalline ZnO zincite hexagonal and TiO2 rutile structure. The XRD rocking curves showed that the thin films grown are highly textured with FWHM of 0.251o for ZnO zincite and 0.065o for TiO2 rutile respectively. Both zincite and rutile exhibited properties of ferromagnetics above room temperature. The AGM results show that the saturation magnetization (Ms) is strongly dependent on substrate temperature.