Magnetic and optical properties of Co-doped and Mn-doped ZnO nanocrystalline particles.

We carried out a systematic study on the effect of Co doping and Mn doping on the structural, magnetic and optical properties of ZnO nanocrystalline particles, using x-ray diffraction, x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), Quantum Design PPMS-9 magnetometry, and Ultra Violet-Visible spectroscopy. The Zn$_{1-}_{x}$Co$_{x}$O and Zn$_{1-}_{x}$Mn$_{x}$O nanoparticles with $0\le x\le 0.1$were successfully prepared by the formal solid-state reaction method. The XPS results and the XRD analysis with full structural Rietveld refinement reveal that both structures have hexagonal wurtzite structure. For all Co-doped ZnO nanoparticles under investigation, the field dependence of the magnetization curves exhibits ferromagnetic behavior with relatively small coercive fields at room temperature. In addition, we found a signature for antiferromagnetic ordering between the Co ions. For the Mn-doped ZnO nanoparticles, we observed ferromagnetic behavior only below 50 K. We also observed a strong correlation between the magnetic and optical behavior of the Co-doped ZnO nanoparticles. Optical diffuse reflectance and absorption spectra exhibit a red shift at room temperature in the absorption band edge with increasing Co-doping. The red shift is attributed to the \textit{sp-d} exchange interaction between free charge carriers in ZnO band and the localized magnetic moments.