Ferromagnetism in silver-doped single-walled zinc oxide nanotubes

Abstract

In this paper, the electronic and magnetic properties of single-walled ZnO:Ag nanotubes with a chirality of (6,0) were investigated. Ab initio simulations were carried out using Atomistic ToolKit computer code implementing density functional theory within the local spin density approximation. To obtain an accurate energy band gap for related systems, we used the Hubbard U semiempirical corrections. The introduction of the Ag atom into the ZnO nanotube structure changes the electronic structure, the energy gap decreases with the silver concentration. The calculated value of total magnetic moments of the Ag-doped single-walled ZnO NT system is 1.0 μB. Our results predict that Ag-doped ZnO NT can be a potential candidate for optoelectronic and spintronic devices.