Electronic structure and magnetism of the diluted magnetic semiconductor Fe-doped ZnO nanoparticles

Kataoka, Takashi*; Kobayashi, Masaki*; Sakamoto, Yuta*; Song, G. S.*; Fujimori, Atsushi*; Chang, F.-H.*; Lin, H.-J.*; Huang, D. J.*; Chen, C. T.*; Okochi, Takuo*; Takeda, Yukiharu   ; Okane, Tetsuo  ; Saito, Yuji  ; Yamagami, Hiroshi; Tanaka, Arata*; Mandal, S. K.*; Nath, T. K.*; Karmakar, D.*; Dasgupta, I.*

We have studied the electronic structure of Fe-doped ZnO nanoparticles, which have been reported to show ferromagnetism at room temperature, by X-ray photoemission spectroscopy (XPS), resonant photoemission spectroscopy (RPES), X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) and X-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD). From the experimental and cluster-model calculation results, we find that Fe atoms are predominantly in the Fe ionic state with mixture of a small amount of Fe and that Fe ions are dominant in the surface region of the nanoparticles. It is shown that the room temperature ferromagnetism in the Fe-doped ZnO nanoparticles is primarily originated from the antiferromagnetic coupling between unequal amounts of Fe ions occupying two sets of nonequivalent positions in the region of the XMCD probing depth of 2-3 nm.