Structural and magnetic study of a dilute magnetic semiconductor: Fe doped CeO2 nanoparticles

TL;DR

This study investigates how Fe doping influences the structure and room temperature ferromagnetism of CeO2 nanoparticles, revealing enhanced magnetic properties without secondary phases across various doping levels.

Contribution

It provides new insights into Fe-doped CeO2 nanoparticles, demonstrating single-phase cubic structure and ferromagnetism at room temperature with increasing Fe content.

Findings

Ce1-xFexO2 nanoparticles are single-phase with cubic structure.

Ferromagnetism is observed at room temperature in all samples.

Magnetic saturation increases with Fe doping.

Abstract

This paper reports the effect of Fe doping on the structure and room temperature ferromagnetism of CeO2 nanoparticles. X-ray diffraction and selective area electron diffraction measurement reflects that Ce1-xFexO2 (x = 0.0 - 0.07) nanoparticles exhibit single phase nature with cubic structure and none of the sample showed the presence of any secondary phase. The mean particle size calculated by using a transmission electron microscopy measurement was found to increase with increase in Fe content. DC magnetization measurements performed at room temperature indicates that all the samples exhibit ferromagnetism. The saturation magnetic moment has been found to increase with an increase in the Fe content.