Effect of 50 MeV Li3+ irradiation on structural and electrical properties of Mn doped ZnO

TL;DR

This study investigates how 50 MeV Li3+ ion irradiation affects the structural and electrical properties of Mn-doped ZnO, revealing changes in phase purity, resistivity, and defect states correlated with irradiation fluence.

Contribution

It provides new insights into the effects of high-energy ion irradiation on the structural and electrical behavior of Mn-doped ZnO, including impurity phase dissolution and resistivity modulation.

Findings

Irradiation dissolves impurity phases in Mn-doped ZnO.

Resistivity decreases with irradiation in low Mn content samples.

Metal-semiconductor transition observed in irradiated low Mn samples.

Abstract

The present work aims to study the effect of ion irradiation on structural and electrical properties and their correlation with the defects in Zn1-xMnxO type system. Zn1-xMnxO (x = 0.02, 0.04) samples have been synthesized by solid-state reaction method and have been irradiated with 50 MeV Li3+ ions. The concomitant changes have been probed by x-ray diffraction (XRD), temperature dependent electrical resistivity and positron annihilation lifetime (PAL) spectroscopy. XRD result shows single phase wurtzite structure for Zn0.98Mn0.02O, whereas for Zn0.96Mn0.04O sample an impurity phase has been found apart from the usual peaks of ZnO. Ion irradiation dissolves this impurity peak. Grain size of the samples found to be uniform. For Zn0.98Mn0.02O, the observed sharp decrease in room temperature resistivity (RhoRT) with irradiation is consistent with the lowering of FWHM of the XRD peaks. However for Zn0.96Mn0.04O, RhoRT decreases for initial fluence but increases for further increase of fluence. All the irradiated Zn0.98Mn0.02O samples show metal-semiconductor transition in temperature dependent resistivity measurement at low temperature. But all the irradiated Zn0.96Mn0.04O samples show semiconducting nature in the whole range of temperature. Results of room temperature resistivity, XRD and PAL measurements are consistent with each other.