The effect of Oxygen partial pressure during deposition in the magnetic properties of ZnO thin film

ABSTRACTWe have studied the magnetic properties of 100 nm thick ZnO thin films prepared by magnetron sputtering in different oxygen partial pressures (ratio of oxygen pressure to total pressure in deposition chamber, POxy). Only the films fabricated at POxy below ~ 0.5 show room temperature ferromagnetism. The saturation magnetization at room temperature is initially found to increase as POxy increases and reaches maximum value of ~ 5 emu/gm at POxy ~ 0.3 and then starts to decrease and becomes diamagnetic for POxy > 0.5. From small angle XRD study of structural properties of the films, we find that the lattice stress developed in the film along c-axis also exhibits a similar behavior with the variation of POxy. Thus, both the room temperature ferromagnetism and lattice stress appear to originate from the intrinsic defects present in the sample.