Magnetic characterization of diluted magnetic semiconductor thin films

In studies of weak magnetism in diluted magnetic semiconductor thin films, there is often a significant difficulty in subtracting the background signal arising from the substrate. In the present work, an improved magnetic correction method is proposed. For Al doped ZnO and Fe doped TiO(2) films, the magnetic moment and coercivity of the samples were corrected by the improved method, and the maximum fitting error due to the glass substrate was calculated. The accuracy and rationale of the improved method are discussed and compared with the traditional method. The results show that room temperature ferromagnetism is observed in Fe doped TiO(2) thin films. The ferromagnetism is strongly correlated with the substitution of Ti by Fe in the TiO(2) lattice, which results in a change in the crystal structure and the quality of the crystallization of the TiO(2) films. The changes are responsible for altering ferromagnetism in the films. (c) 2011 American Institute of Physics. [doi: 10.1063/1.3532043]