Structural, Optical and Magnetic properties of Ni-doped ZnO synthesized by Co-precipitation method

Dilute magnetic semiconductors of Ni-doped ZnO nanoparticles (Zn1-xNixO, where x = 0.00, 0.02, 0.04, 0.05, 0.06 and 0.08) were synthesized by the chemical co-precipitation method. The effects of Ni concentration on the structure, optical and magnetic properties of the obtained samples were investigated using X-ray diffraction (XRD), energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopic analysis (EDX), UV–visible absorption (UV–V) , photoluminescence spectroscopy (PL) and vibrating sample magnetometry(VSM). XRD patterns of the prepared samples display that the lattice constants of Zn1-xNixO, of x > 0.0 are slightly larger than the ones of pure ZnO. However, XRD reveals that both pure and doped ZnO samples exhibit hexagonal wurtzite structure. The energy band gap has also been estimated using UV-Vis optical absorption spectra. EDX spectroscopy was used to identify the elemental constituents of a material in samples. Also, vibrating sample magnetometry (VSM) data of Ni-doped ZnO show distinctly hysteresis loops at room temperature indicating the ferromagnetic behavior of the samples.