Abstract
In this study, a series of manganese [Mn]-doped zinc oxide [ZnO] hierarchical microspheres [HMSs] are prepared by hydrothermal method only using zinc acetate and manganese acetate as precursors and ethylene glycol as solvent. X-ray diffraction indicates that all of the as-obtained samples including the highest Mn (7 mol%) in the crystal lattice of ZnO have a pure phase (hexagonal wurtzite structure). A broad Raman spectrum from as-synthesized doping samples ranges from 500 to 600 cm-1, revealing the successful doping of paramagnetic Mn2+ ions in the host ZnO. Optical absorption analysis of the samples exhibits a blueshift in the absorption band edge with increasing dopant concentration, and corresponding photoluminescence spectra show that Mn doping suppresses both near-band edge UV emission and defect-related blue emission. In particular, magnetic measurements confirm robust room-temperature ferromagnetic behavior with a high Curie temperature exceeding 400 K, signifying that the as-formed Mn-doped ZnO HMSs will have immense potential in spintronic devices and spin-based electronic technologies.
Highlights
Zinc oxide [ZnO] exhibits many fascinating properties [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]
The interest in ZnO has significantly been increased in the last decade [7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21] since the theoretical prediction of above RT ferromagnetism [RTFM] in Mn-doped ZnO diluted magnetic semiconductors [DMSs] by Dietl et al [8]
We can find that the pure ZnO samples present a white color, while Mn-doped ZnO HMSs for different concentrations become light yellow, and the color becomes deeper and deeper with increasing Mn
Summary
Zinc oxide [ZnO] exhibits many fascinating properties [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]. It is an intrinsic n-type II-VI semiconductor with a wide bandgap of 3.37 eV at room temperature [RT] and a large excitation binding energy of 60 meV. There is no report on the Mn-doped ZnO hierarchical spherical structures showing a robust RTFM behavior with a high TC. With the aim of providing further understanding of the optical nature of Mn-doped ZnO HMSs, UV-visible [vis] and PL spectra are used to study their optical characteristics, and the corresponding mechanism has been discussed.
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