Spectroscopic ellipsometry and morphological characterizations of nanocrystalline Hg1-xMnxO oxide diluted magnetic semiconductor thin films

Abstract

The structural, optical spectroscopic ellipsometry and morphological properties of nanocrystalline Hg1-xMnxO (0 ≤ x ≤ 0.2) oxide diluted magnetic semiconductor thin films synthesized by electron beam deposition technique have been investigated by means of X-ray diffraction (XRD), spectroscopic ellipsometry (SE) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) techniques. All the deposited films crystallize in the form of a hexagonal crystal structure. The integration between X-ray and atomic force microscopy data shows a very good agreement for the nanosize nature of the deposited films. For the surface roughness, good matching between the results of SE and AFM measurements was observed. In the spectral range 200–1200 nm, the real part (ε1) and imaginary part (ε2) of the dielectric constant of nanocrystalline Hg1-xMnxO films have been extracted from SE measurements. At fixed energy value, the ε1, consequently the refractive index is found to decrease with increasing Mn2+ dopant. In contrary, the energy gap (Eg) of the deposited films determined from the ε2 is found to increase as the Mn2+ concentration increases. The variation of both the ε1 and Eg as a function of Mn2+ concentration is understood based on Lorentz-Lorenz relation and sp-d exchange interaction, respectively. The results reported here show that Mn-doped HgO nanocrystalline films could be employed in the fabrication of nanoscale optical and magneto-optical devices.