Structural investigations of magnetic nanocrystals embedded in semiconductors using synchrotron radiation x-ray diffraction

Traditional electronics can be greatly stimulated by a combination of magnetic and semiconducting properties where spins provide an additional freedom degree. Recently theoretical works predict that some semiconductors (e.g. ZnO, GaN, TiO2, and Si) doped with transition metal (TM) are diluted magnetic semiconductors (DMS) [1]. In DMS materials, TM ions are substituted onto cation sites of the host semiconductor and are coupled with free carriers via indirect interaction resulting in ferromagnetism. However most experimental works have only concentrated on reporting high Tc and interpreted the observed ferromagnetism in terms of DMS without detail structural characterization. In this work, we have prepared magnetic ZnO, TiO2 and Si samples doped with TM by implantation, and correlated their magnetic and structural properties [2-5]. By synchrotron radiation x-ray diffraction, Fe, Ni, Co and Mn-silicide nanocrystals are observed in our samples, and are responsible for the magnetism. Depending on their crystalline structure, those nanocrystals are crystallographically oriented with respect to the host matrix. The structural information is well agreeable with the magnetic properties measured by SQUID. Additionally due to their orientation nature (crystallographically oriented or randomly oriented with respect to the host crystal), these nanocrystals in some cases are very difficult to detect by a simple Bragg-Brentano scan. This nature results in the pitfall of using XRD to exclude secondary phase in DMS materials.
References
[1] T. Dietl, et al, Science 287, 1019 (2000).
[2] K. Potzger, Shengqiang Zhou , et al, Appl. Phys. Lett. 88, 052508 (2006).
[3] Shengqiang Zhou, et al., J. Appl. Phys. 100, 114304 (2006).
[4] Shengqiang Zhou, et al., to be published at Phys. Rev. B (2007).
[5] Shengqiang Zhou, et al., to be published at J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys. (2007).