Structural and magnetic studies of Mn-doped CeO₂ thin films prepared by sol-gel method

ABSTRACT

The structural and magnetic properties of sol-gel-derived Mn-doped CeO₂ films were studied. The magnetic measurements show that the samples have room temperature ferromagnetism. The magnetization saturations were 0.75 μ_B/Mn, 0.93 μ_B/Mn and 1.12 μ_B/Mn for samples with 1%, 3% and 5% of Mn, respectively. The ferromagnetism of these samples is the intrinsic property. Since XRD results show the samples are single-phase of the pure CeO₂ structure, indicating that Mn doping does not form other structures and impurities. Raman scattering also confirm the absence of Mn-related oxide. As increasing the Mn content, the crystallite size decrease, but the ferromagnetism increases.

KEYWORDS:

• Mn-doped CeO₂
• sol-gel method
• room temperature ferromagnetism

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant Nos. 61176010 and 61172027, Guangdong Natural Science Foundation under Grant No. 2014A030311049, the Cooperation Research Foundation of Instrumental Analysis and Research Center of SYSU under Grant No. 2014–09.