- Ferromagnetic materials,
- Thin films -- Magnetic properties,
- Nanostructured materials
(Sn, Fe)-codoped In₂O₃ epitaxial films were deposited on (111)-oriented Y-stabilized ZrO₂ substrates by pulsed laser deposition with constant Fe concentration and different Sn concentrations. The influence of Sn concentration on the crystal structure and properties of Fe-doped In₂O₃ ferromagnetic semiconductor films has been investigated systematically. Experimental results indicate that Sn doping can effectively reduce the surface roughness and suppresses breakup of the films into separated islands. At the same time, the optical band gap increases and the electrical properties improve correspondingly. However, although the carrier density increases dramatically with the Sn doping, no obvious change of the ferromagnetism is observed. This is explained by a modified bounded magnetic polaron model.
© 2012 Zhou et al.; licensee Springer. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.