Israel Lorite

Differences in n-type doping efficiency between Al- and Ga-ZnO films

A careful and wide comparison between Al and Ga as substitutional dopants in the ZnO wurtzite structure is presented. Both cations behave as n-type dopants and their inclusion improves the optical and electrical properties of the ZnO matrix, making it more transparent in the visible range and rising up its electrical conductivity. However, the same dopant/Zn ratio leads to a very different doping efficiency when comparing Al and Ga, being the Ga cation a more effective dopant of the ZnO film. The measured differences between Al- and Ga-doped films are explained with the hypothesis that different quantities of these dopant cations are able to enter substitutionally in the ZnO matrix. Ga cations seem to behave as perfect substitutional dopants, while Al cation might occupy either substitutional or interstitial sites. Moreover, the subsequent charge balance after doping appear to be related with the formation of different intrinsic defects that depends on the dopant cation. The knowledge of the doped-ZnO films microstructure is a crucial step to optimize the deposition of transparent conducting electrodes for solar cells, displays, and other photoelectronic devices.

A Solid-State Electrochemical Reaction as the Origin of Magnetism at Oxide Nanoparticle Interfaces

This work was supported by the CSIC 2006-50F0122, CSIC 2007-50I015, FIS-2008-06249, MAT2008-06330, and CICYT MAT2007-66845-102-01. M.S.M.G. also acknowledges the ERC program for her starting grant.

Advances in methods to obtain and characterise room temperature magnetic ZnO

We report the existence of magnetic order at room temperature in Li-doped ZnO microwires after low energy H+ implantation. The microwires with diameters between 0.3 and 10 μm were prepared by a carbothermal process. We combine spectroscopy techniques to elucidate the influence of the electronic structure and local environment of Zn, O, and Li and their vacancies on the magnetic response. Ferromagnetism at room temperature is obtained only after implanting H+ in Li-doped ZnO. The overall results indicate that low-energy proton implantation is an effective method to produce the necessary amount of stable Zn vacancies near the Li ions to trigger the magnetic order.

Transport properties of single TiO2 nanotubes

We investigated the electric transport properties of single TiO2 nanotubes separated from an anodic titania nanotube array. The temperature dependence of the resistance measured with the conventional four point method of all investigated samples show a Mott variable range hopping behavior. The results obtained with two contacts indicate the existence of a potential barrier between the Cr/Au contacts and samples surfaces, which influence is clearly observable at temperatures <150 K. Impedance spectroscopy in the frequency range of 40 Hz to 1 MHz carried out at room temperature indicates that the electronic transport of these polycrystalline tubes is dominated by the grain cores.

Ellipsometric investigation of ZnFe2O4 thin films in relation to magnetic properties

We report an influence of disorder on structural and magnetic properties of ZnFe2O4 thin films grown at temperatures ranging from 400 °C to 600 °C by pulsed laser deposition in O2 atmosphere on SrTiO3 (100) substrates evidenced by properties of electronic transitions observed in the dielectric function. Inversion of the normal spinel structure was found to be one of the main mechanisms responsible for the increase in the magnetic response for the lowest growth temperature. The enhanced feature in the dielectric function located at ∼3.5 eV, related to the transition involving tetrahedrally coordinated Fe3+ cations, corresponds to the dominating magnetic coupling between the octahedral and tetrahedral lattice sites, responsible for the overall ferrimagnetic behaviour of the film grown at the lowest temperature.

Detection of defect-induced magnetism in low-dimensional ZnO structures by Magnetophotocurrent

The detection of defect-induced magnetic order in single low-dimensional oxide structures is in general difficult because of the relatively small yield of magnetically ordered regions. In this work, the effect of an external magnetic field on the transient photocurrent measured after light irradiation on different ZnO samples at room temperature is studied. It has been found that a magnetic field produces a change in the relaxation rate of the transient photocurrent only in magnetically ordered ZnO samples. This rate can decrease or increase with field, depending on whether the magnetically ordered region is in the bulk or only at the surface of the ZnO sample. The phenomenon reported here is of importance for the development of magneto-optical low-dimensional oxides devices and provides a new guideline for the detection of magnetic order in low-dimensional magnetic semiconductors.

Conductivity fluctuations in proton-implanted ZnO microwires

Electric noise can be an important limitation for applications of conducting elements in the nanometer size range. The intrinsic electrical noise of prospective materials for opto-spintronics applications like ZnO has not yet been characterized. In this study, we have investigated the conductivity fluctuations in 10 nm thick current paths produced by proton implantation of ZnO microwires at room temperature. The voltage noise under a constant dc current bias in undoped, as well as in Li-doped microwires, is characterized by [Formula: see text] power spectra with [Formula: see text]. The noise intensity scales with the square of the bias current pointing to bias-independent resistivity fluctuations as a source of the observed noise. The normalized power spectral density appears inversely proportional to the number of carriers in the probed sample volume, in agreement with the phenomenological Hooge law. For the proton-implanted ZnO microwire and at 1 Hz we obtain a normalized power spectral density as low as [Formula: see text] Hz(-1).

Study of non-linear Hall effect in nitrogen-grown ZnO microstructure and the effect of H+-implantation

We report magnetotransport studies on microstructured ZnO film grown by pulsed laser deposition in N2 atmosphere on a-plane Al2O3 substrates and the effect of low energy H+-implantation. Non-linearity has been found in the magnetic field dependent Hall resistance, which decreases with temperature. We explain this effect with a two-band model assuming the conduction through two different parallel channels having different types of charge carriers. Reduced non-linearity after H+-implantation in the grown film is due to the shallow-donor effect of hydrogen giving rise to an increment in the electron density, reducing the effect of the other channel.