Abstract
Rare earth ions when incorporated in a semiconductor oxide lattice at nanoscale regime can affect the structural, optical as well as the magnetic properties of semiconductor host lattice. The change observed in the properties of the host lattice is due to the interaction between the dopant ions and host crystal. The structural and the morphological properties of Tb3+doped ZnO nanoparticles were studied using XRD, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and AFM studies. These experiments were performed on the doped nanoparticles to analyze the defects generated in the ZnO host lattice when a rare earth ion having ionic radii greater than that of Zn ion is doped in the ZnO nanoparticles. EDX measurement was used to estimate the elemental composition. An analysis of the XRD peak profile of the undoped and doped ZnO nanoparticle samples were done to evaluate the dislocation densities and the surface area. Both the parameters show an increase up to a certain concentration of Tb, which reveals the increase in the surface defects when Tb is introduced in ZnO host lattice. The strain calculated using Uniform deformation model from the XRD data also show an increase in the stress with the increase in Tb concentration which confirms the deformation of the host lattice. The magnetic study performed on the Pure ZnO nanoparticles shows a diamagnetic behaviour, while, Tb-doped ZnO nanoparticles exhibits room temperature ferromagnetism. The correlation between defects generated upon Tb-doping to the observed ferromagnetism, in the synthesized nanoparticles, has been reported.
Published Version
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