A 236-Ghz Fe³⁺ EPR Study of Nanoparticles of the Ferromagnetic Room-Temperature Semiconductor Sn_1-xFe_xO₂ (x = 0.005)

Sushil K. Misra, Concordia University
S. I. Andronenko, Concordia University
Alex Punnoose, Boise State University
Dmitry Tipikin, Cornell University
J. H. Freed, Cornell University

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This is an author-produced, peer-reviewed version of this article. The final publication is available at www.springerlink.com. Copyright restrictions may apply. DOI: 10.1007/s00723-009-0024-4

Abstract

High-frequency (236 GHz) electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) studies of Fe³⁺ ions at 255 K are reported in a Sn_1-xFe_xO₂ powder with x = 0.005, which is a ferromagnetic semiconductor at room temperature. The observed EPR spectrum can be simulated reasonably well as the overlap of spectra due to four magnetically inequivalent high-spin (HS) Fe³⁺ ions (S = 5/2). The spectrum intensity is calculated, using the overlap I(BL) + (I(HS1) + I(HS2) + I(HS3) + I(HS4)) 9 x e^-0.00001xB, where B is the magnetic field intensity in Gauss, I represents the intensity of an EPR line (HS1, HS2, HS3, HS4), and BL stands for the base line (the exponential factor, as found by fitting to the experimental spectrum, is related to the Boltzmann population distribution of energy levels at 255 K, which is the temperature of the sample in the spectrometer). These high-frequency EPR results are significantly different from those at X-band. The large values of the zero-field splitting parameter (D) observed here for the four centers at the high frequency of 236 GHz are beyond the capability of X-band, which can only record spectra of ions only with much smaller D values than those reported here.