Facile synthesis of highly uniform Mn/Co-codoped ZnO nanowires: Optical, electrical, and magnetic properties

Abstract

In this article, Co/Mn-codoped ZnO nanowires (NWs) were successfully synthesized on a silicon substrate by the thermal evaporation method with Au catalyst. The X-ray diffraction pattern indicated that the Co/Mn-codoped ZnO NWs are a hexagonal wurtzite structure without a second phase, and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy revealed that the Co and Mn ions were introduced into the ZnO NWs with the content of ∼0.8 at% and ∼1.2 at%, respectively. Photoluminescence spectra and Raman spectra showed that the Co/Mn were doped into the NWs and resulted in the shift of the near-band-edge emission. Moreover, the novel Raman peak at 519.3 cm⁻¹ has suggested that the two kinds of cations via doping could affect the local polarizability. Compared with the undoped ZnO NW, the electrical measurement showed that the Co/Mn-codoping enhanced the conductivity by an order of magnitude due to the presence of Co, Mn cations. The electron mobility and carrier concentration of a fabricated field effect transistor (FET) device is 679 cm² V⁻¹s⁻¹ and 2 × 10¹⁸ cm⁻³, respectively. Furthermore, the M–H curve demonstrated that the Co/Mn-codoped ZnO NWs have obvious ferromagnetic characteristics at room temperature. Our study enhances the understanding of the novel performances of transition-metal codoped ZnO NWs and also provides a potential way to fabricate optoelectronic devices.