Substitutional site effects of Cr(II) ions on optical and magnetic properties of 1D CdS semiconductor nanoneedles for optoelectronic and spintronic applications

Abstract

Spin controlled diluted magnetic semiconductors (DMSs) could bring revolution in the processing speed as well as in enhancing the storage capacity. To achieve its industrial application, several impurities have been doped from the 3d/4f into semiconductors, however, Cr has not yet been doped into CdS 1D nanostructures. Here, in the present study, we report on the Cr-doped CdS 1D nanoneedles synthesized by CVD and studied its optical and magnetic properties. The successful incorporation of Cr-ions into CdS confirmed by EDX and XRD. Along with the increase in Cr-ions concentration, first PL-peak shifted from 514.1 to 558.3 nm associated with the formation of excitonic magnetic polarons (EMPs) and the second peak centered at 993.8 nm may correspond to the aggregation of Cr-ions. For the first time, we tuned CdS emission up to ~ 482 nm covering visible spectral region up to near-infrared (NIR) region. With increasing the Cr-ions concentration up to 6.2%, saturation magnetization (Ms) was significantly enhanced from 0.614 × 10−3 Am2/kg to 0.987 × 10−3 Am2/kg. These findings will promote their future applications in the optoelectronic and spintronic devices.