Authors: N Sai Krishna S Kaleemulla G Amarendra N Madhusudhana Rao C Krishnamoorthi I Omkaram D Sreekantha Reddy
Publish Date: 2015/07/31
Volume: 26, Issue: 11, Pages: 8635-8643
Abstract
The In1−xCrx2O3 powders as well as thin films of x = 003 005 and 007 were synthesized using a solid state reaction and an electron beam evaporation technique on glass substrate respectively The influence of Cr doping concentration on structural optical and magnetic properties of the In2O3 samples was systematically studied The Xray diffraction results confirmed that all the Cr doped In2O3 samples exist cubic structure of In2O3 without any secondary phases presence The chemical composition analyses showed that all the Cr doped In2O3 compounds were nearly stoichiometric The Xray photoelectron spectroscopy analysis of the Cr doped In2O3 thin films showed an increase of oxygen vacancies with Cr concentration and the existence of Cr as Cr3+ state in the host In2O3 lattice A small blue shift in the optical band gap was observed in the powder compounds when the dopant concentration increased from x = 003 to x = 007 In thin films the band gap found to increase from 363 to 374 eV with an increase of Cr concentration The magnetic measurements show that the undoped In2O3 bulk powder sample has the diamagnetic property at room temperature And a trace of paramagnetism was observed in Cr doped In2O3 powders However In1−xCrx2O3 thin films x = 000 003 005 and 007 samples shows soft ferromagnetism The observed ferromagnetism in thin films are attributed to oxygen vacancies created during film prepared in vacuum conditions The ferromagnetic exchange interactions are established between metal cations via free electrons trapped in oxygen vacancies FcentersAuthors are grateful to UGCDAECSR IGCAR Kalpakkam 603102 Tamilnadu India for providing financial Grant No CSRKN/CRS17/201112/589 support to carry out the present work The authors are highly thankful to Pondicherry central university for providing the vibrating sample magnetometer facilities Authors also thank VITSIF for providing XRD and UV–Vis–NIR spectrophotometer facilities
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