Dopant Induced Room Temperature Ferromagnetism in Spintronic SnO2: Co Nanoparticles
E. Pradyumna1, N. Sreelekha2, D. Amaranatha Reddy3, K.R. Gunasekhar4, K. Subramanyam5
1E. Pradyumna, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Amrita School of Engineering, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India.
2N. Sreelekha, Department of Physics, Raghu Engineering College, Visakhapatnam, Andrapradesh, India.
3D. Amaranatha Reddy, Department of Chemistry and Chemical Institute for Functional Materials, Pusan National University, Busan, Republic of Korea.
4K.R. Gunasekhar, Department of Instrumentation and Applied Physics, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore , India.
5K. Subramanyam, Department of Physics, Raghu Engineering College, Visakhapatnam, Andrapradesh, India.
Manuscript received on October 04, 2015. | Revised Manuscript received on October 09, 2015. | Manuscript published on October 31, 2015. | PP: 22-26 | Volume-2 Issue-11, October 2015. | Retrieval Number: K03461021115
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© The Authors. Published By: Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering and Sciences Publication (BEIESP). This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
Abstract: Pristine and Co doped SnO2 nanoparticles were synthesized in aqueous solution by facile chemical co-precipitation method with polyethylene glycol (PEG) as a capping agent. The as prepared samples were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), high resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM), Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectra and vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM). XRD patterns revealed that particles of all samples were crystallized in single phase rutile type tetragonal crystal structure (P42/mnm) of SnO2 . TEM images indicated spherical shape of nanoparticles with a size ranging from 25-35 nm. FTIR spectra suggested that the PEG simply coexisted with the SnO2 surface nanoparticles and inhibited the agglomeration of the nanoparticles. Magnetization measurements revealed that all the Co doped SnO2 nanoparticles exhibited ferromagnetic signal which became stronger with increasing Co content. Variation of ferromagnetic order with Co content from vibration sample magnetometer is endorsed to the anti-ferromagnetic (AFM) interactions among the magnetic ions as anticipated by the bound magnetic polarons (BMP) theory.
Keywords: Chemical synthesis, PEG, TEM, BMP model.