Influence of reducing anneal on the ferromagnetism in single crystalline Co-doped ZnO thin films

This paper reports that the high-quality Co-doped ZnO single crystalline films have been grown on a-plane sapphire substrates by using molecular-beam epitaxy. The as-grown films show high resistivity and non-ferromagnetism at room temperature, while they become more conductive and ferromagnetic after annealing in the reducing atmosphere either in the presence or absence of Zn vapour. The x-ray absorption studies indicate that all Co ions in these samples actually substituted into the ZnO lattice without formatting any detectable secondary phase. Compared with weak ferromagnetism (0.16 μ_B/Co²⁺) in the Zn_0.95Co_0.05O single crystalline film with reducing annealing in the absence of Zn vapour, the films annealed in the reducing atmosphere with Zn vapour are found to have much stronger ferromagnetism (0.65 μ_B/Co²⁺) at room temperature. This experimental studies clearly indicate that Zn interstitials are more effective than oxygen vacancies to activate the high-temperature ferromagnetism in Co-doped ZnO films, and the corresponding ferromagnetic mechanism is discussed.