Synthesis and characterization of niobium doped titanium oxide for spintronics applications

Abstract

Spintronics is a promising field that involves vast applications exploiting both the intrinsic spin of the electron and its charge. Transition metal doped oxide based dilute magnetic semiconductors (DMS) are suitable for these purposes. This work reports undoped and niobium-doped titanium oxide (XNb=0.00, 0.5% and 1 wt%) nanoparticles, synthesized by a modified hydrothermal method. The structural properties were studied using X-ray diffraction, (XRD), which has depicted that the dopant niobium is well incorporated in the anatase titanium oxide lattices. The surface morphology of the freshly synthesized nanoparticles indicates the formation of spherical nanoparticles without any irregular structures, with good agreement of the particle sizes to the XRD results. Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy (UV) studies confirm the purity and the expected phases of the Nb doped TiO2. Vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM) studies show evidence of enhanced room temperature ferromagnetism in Nb doped TiO2. The optical properties of freshly synthesized Nb doped TiO2 reveal a band gap energy of around 3.12 eV. These results authenticate a good reason for considering a dilute magnetic semiconductor exhibiting room temperature ferromagnetism for spintronics applications.