Can one introduce long range ferromagnetism by doping transition metal in wide band gap semiconducting ZnO

Abstract In this report, we present a systematic study of magnetic behavior of transition metal (TM = Fe or Cu) doped ZnO and co-doped (Cu, Fe) ZnO nanoparticles. All the samples show antiferromagnetic (AFM) like inverse susceptibility at low temperatures. In all the samples AFM Curie-Weiss temperature T AFM increases with increase in TM ion concentration indicating enhanced antiferromagnetic correlation upon TM doping. We observe a crossover from antiferromagnetic correlation state to ferromagnetic correlation around temperature (T) 100–150 K. We shall try to explain all the experimental observations by invoking the role of oxygen vacancies, valency of transition metal ions, formation and interaction between bound magnetic polaron (BMP) and their melting in ZnO matrix. Even though we observe ferromagnetic correlation around room temperature in all these samples from the inverse magnetic susceptibility data, but no true long range ferromagnetic transition was observed in magnetization down to lowest measured temperature of 5 K. Our study indicates the difficulties in achieving long range ferromagnetism arising due to the formation of BMPs upon lowering the temperature where these BMPs get antiferromagnetically correlated due to superexchange interaction occurring in transition metal doped wide band gap semiconducting ZnO matrix.