Magnetism in dopant-free ZnO nanoplates. Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • It is known that bulk ZnO is a nonmagnetic material. However, the electronic band structure of ZnO is severely distorted when the ZnO is in the shape of a very thin plate with its dimension along the c-axis reduced to a few nanometers while keeping the bulk scale sizes in the other two dimensions. We found that the chemically synthesized ZnO nanoplates exhibit magnetism even at room temperature. First-principles calculations show a growing asymmetry in the spin distribution within the distorted bands formed from Zn (3d) and O (2p) orbitals with the reduction of thickness of the ZnO nanoplates, which is suggested to be responsible for the observed magnetism. In contrast, reducing the dimension along the a- or b-axes of a ZnO crystal does not yield any magnetism for ZnO nanowires that grow along c-axis, suggesting that the internal electric field produced by the large {0001} polar surfaces of the nanoplates may be responsible for the distorted electronic band structures of thin ZnO nanoplates.

published proceedings

  • Nano Lett

altmetric score

  • 3

author list (cited authors)

  • Hong, J., Choi, J., Jang, S. S., Gu, J., Chang, Y., Wortman, G., Snyder, R. L., & Wang, Z. L.

citation count

  • 64

complete list of authors

  • Hong, Jung-Il||Choi, Jiil||Jang, Seung Soon||Gu, Jiyeong||Chang, Yangling||Wortman, Gregory||Snyder, Robert L||Wang, Zhong Lin

publication date

  • February 2012