preparation of fe substituted zno nanoparticles and investigation of their magnetic behaviors

Nano-powders of diluted magnetic semiconductor zn1-xfexo (0.0≤ x ≤0.1) were prepared via the sol-gel auto-combustion method. crystal structure and phase identification carried out by x-ray diffraction (xrd) analysis. mean crystallite size of the powders was estimated by scherrer's formula. as m-h loops of the fe substituted zno showed ferromagnetic behavior. the results of x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (xps) showed that there is a mixture of fe^3+ and fe^2+ ions in all fe substituted samples. antiferromagnetic interaction between neighboring fe^3+-fe^2+ ions suppressed the ferromagnetic behavior of the samples at higher doping concentrations of fe.