Magnetic properties of Zn 1-xNi xO (0.25? x ? 0.50) prepared by solid-state reactions

In this study the origin of ferromagnetism in ZnO-based bulk systems has been investigated using Nidoped ZnO samples, Zn 1-xNi xO with 0.25 ? x ? 0.50, prepared by solid-state reactions. The structural characterizations indicated that the Ni 2+ ions almost uniformly distributed in all the samples, and the samples have hexagonal wurtzite structure; however, when x is increased toward 0.50, a new NiO phase is formed. A ferromagnetism (FM) has been observed for all the samples at and below the room temperature. In other words, the room temperature results of (M-H) curves show that the FM observed is intrinsic for all the Ni-doped ZnO samples. However, the saturated magnetizations decrease gradually with increasing Ni concentration. This indicates that, in addition to FM, the excessive doping of Ni in ZnO also causes an antiferromagnetic (AFM) contribution which increases with increasing Ni amount. This result is also supported by the magnetization against temperature measurements. Furthermore, the trend of the acsusceptibility (?) versus temperature curves, measured under an ac-magnetic field of 100 Oe, also support our conclusion about the antiferromagnetic contribution to ferromagnetism in our samples. © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011.Acknowledgements The research work was supported by the Research Fund of Çukurova University, Adana, Turkey, research project no. FEF2009BAP10, no. AMYO2009BAP1, no. FEF2005D16. We wish to thank Aydin Eraydin for his help