Structural, optical and magnetic studies of sol-gel synthesized Mg-doped pure anatase TiO2 nanoparticles for spintronic and optoelectronics applications

Abstract

Here in we reported the synthesis of MgxT1−xO2 (for x = 0.00, 0.01, 0.02, 0.03, 0.04) nanoparticles via simple sol-gel technique. Mg-doped TiO2 is a hopeful material for the study of the origin of room-temperature ferromagnetism (RTFM) in dilute magnetic semiconductors (DMS) systems, but very scanty work on this material has been reported. The as-synthesized samples were subjected to X-ray diffraction (XRD) which shows that the samples aligned with tetragonal anatase phase of TiO2. UV\\Vis\\NIR diffuse reflectance spectroscopy analysis showed a slight increase in TiO2 energy band gap with Mg doping from 3.25eV to 3.33 eV as a result of blue shift in absorbance edge of the sample. The obtained recombination of photo-generated electrons and holes is excellently curbed by Mg doping which was examined by the photoluminescence study and the blue shift in the most intense Eg (3) Raman mode confirms integrated Mg in TiO2 lattice. As revealed by Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy (FESEM), the morphology of the samples showed irregularly distributed nanoparticles and to examine elemental composition of the samples, Energy Dispersive X-ray (EDX) were carried out which stipulates all elements like Ti and Mg are in the sample. Soft ferromagnetism at low magnetic field with hysteresis loop was noticed in all the samples, with values of coercivity in the range 206–309Oe. Maximum value of saturation magnetization was evident by the 2% doped sample. These materials can find applications in electronics, spintronics and magneto-optics devices.