Out-of-Plane Magnetic Moment and Lattice Distortion in Sputtered Ge Added Fe3O4 Thin Film.

Fe3O4 has been known to have attractive physical properties for spintronic applications such as half-metallicity, however, its complicated magnetism has yet to be elucidated fully. We investigated the sputtered polycrystalline Fe3O4 thin film in which Ge was added for stabilization of the spinal structure. From X-ray photoelectron and Raman spectroscopies, major part of added Ge is found to be quadrivalent and considered to be incorporated in the spinel structure. Out-of-plane alignment of the local moment was confirmed by conversion electron Mössbauer spectroscopy and magnetization measurements with an applied field up to 70 kOe also support it. The Pawley refinement of the X-ray diffraction profile with a series of possible space groups in the spinel structure suggests that the crystal symmetry is reduced from cubic to tetragonal or orthorhombic spinels with (100) or (010) strains up to -0.231%. The uniaxial anisotropy constants K(u) for the tetragonally distorted cases estimated from the evaluated strains and the ab-initio calculation were found to be around 1.05 x 10(6) erg/cm3. We consider that the magnetic anisotropy induced by the lattice distortion contributes to the out-of-plane alignment of local moments in addition to the previously reported effect by the exchange coupling across crystallographic defects of the antiphase boundaries.

InSb-added TiO2 nanocomposite films by RF sputtering.

This study investigates the preparation of InSb-added TiO2 nanocomposite films by RF sputtering. The optical absorption spectra are obviously shifted to visible and near-infrared regions. High-resolution transmission electron microscopy indicates that sphere-shaped InSb nanocrystals with a size of about 15 nm are dispersed in a matrix. The X-ray diffraction result reveals that the matrix forms a phase mixture of TiO2 and In2O3, which is also produced by decomposing the InSb during postannealing at 723 K. Therefore, the absorption shift is clearly due to quantum size effects of the InSb nanocrystals embedded in the wide-gap oxides TiO2 and In2O3.

Metal-doped magnetite thin films.

This paper investigates magnetite (Fe3O4) thin film containing a small amount of a metal element. The films are prepared by rf sputtering with a composite target of ceramic iron oxide with metal chips. Low-temperature magnetization of magnetite containing 5.3%Ge reveals that the film contains some magnetically weak coupling grains. The metal element Mg reduces both hematite (alpha-Fe2O3) and magnetite, resulting in single-phase wüstite (Fe1-xO). In contrast, adding Ge selectively reduces hematite, while magnetite remains unreactive. According to the free energy of reaction, the element Ge is able to reduce hematite only, whereas the element Mg is capable of reducing both hematite and magnetite. This property is in good agreement with the experiment results.

Formation of Nb2O5 matrix and Vis-NIR absorption in Nb-Ge-O thin film.

This paper investigates the crystal structure and optical absorption of Ge-doped Nb-oxide (Nb-Ge-O) thin films prepared by RF sputtering. A wide-gap material, Nb2O5, is selectively produced as a matrix to disperse Ge nanocrystals through compositional optimization with Ge chip numbers and oxygen ratio in argon. The optical-absorption spectra are obviously shifted to visible (vis) and near-infrared (NIR) regions, suggesting that a composite thin film with Ge nanocrystals dispersed in Nb2O5 matrix exhibits quantum-size effects. Accordingly, the two valuable characteristics of the Nb2O5 matrix and the vis-NIR absorption are found to be retained simultaneously in Nb-Ge-O thin films.

One-step synthesis of PbSe-ZnSe composite thin film.

This study investigates the preparation of PbSe-ZnSe composite thin films by simultaneous hot-wall deposition (HWD) from multiple resources. The XRD result reveals that the solubility limit of Pb in ZnSe is quite narrow, less than 1 mol%, with obvious phase-separation in the composite thin films. A nanoscale elemental mapping of the film containing 5 mol% PbSe indicates that isolated PbSe nanocrystals are dispersed in the ZnSe matrix. The optical absorption edge of the composite thin films shifts toward the low-photon-energy region as the PbSe content increases. The use of a phase-separating PbSe-ZnSe system and HWD techniques enables simple production of the composite package.