Chemically Synthesized Ferromagnetic Zn1−xCoxO Nanocrystals: Raman Investigations

The present paper describes Raman studies of chemically synthesized nanocrystalline cobalt-substituted (up to 10%) ZnO samples exhibiting room temperature ferromagnetism. These studies were carried out using Laser excitation wavelengths −457.9, 532 and 785 nm. The Raman spectra of the samples excited with 457.9 nm show predominantly lattice modes of ZnO because of pre-resonance enhancement. In the Raman spectra of cobalt added ZnO samples excited with 532 and 785 nm, clear evidence is seen for the presence of Co3O4 (an impurity phase not detectable in XRD) in the samples with cobalt exceeding 3%. The presence of Co3O4 in the samples having higher concentration of cobalt explains the nonmonotonic increase in magnetization with Co-concentration in the ZnO1 − xCox samples.