Investigation on the impact of cobalt doping on optical, structural and magnetic properties of zinc oxide nanoparticles

Abstract

In the current article, we investigated the impact of transition metal Co2+ doping in ZnO nanoparticles and its effect on their optical, structural, and magnetic properties. The synthesized nanoparticles have the generic formula Zn1-xCoxO (x = 0.00, 0.03, 0.06, and 0.09). Single-phase hexagonal crystal structure of the synthesized nanopowder was confirmed by X-ray diffractograms. Tauc plots were used to calculate the band gap of all the samples. Multiple emission peaks were observed from the photoluminescence studies. HRTEM was employed to study the particle morphology and the size distribution. X-ray photoelectron (XPS) spectroscopy was performed to investigate the chemical composition of samples. Magnetic measurements were carried out to study the magnetic behaviour of pure and doped ZnO samples. Ferromagnetic behaviour became more prominent with the addition of Co doping, as observed by room temperature M-H plots.