Production of bulk dilute ferromagnetic semiconductor by mechanical milling

Abstract We tried to prepare the bulk dilute ferromagnetic semiconductor (DMS) by mechanical milling (MM). Experimental results were as following: (1) The observation of X-ray diffraction and transmitting electron microscopy showed that the particle diameter of host ZnO powder were reduced to about 10 nm by MM. (2) The MM for the mixtures of V 2 O 5 /ZnO or γ-Fe 2 O 3 /ZnO realizes the V- or Fe-doped ZnO nano-powders. (3) The values of magnetization under the field of 5 kOe were nearly saturated to 0.8×10 −3 to 3×10 −3 μ B /V-ion for V x Zn 1− x O ( x =0.05, 0.1 and 0.2), and 0.2–0.3 μ B /Fe-ion for Fe x Zn 1− x O ( x =0.05 and 0.1) at room temperature. The above results show that the ferromagnetic DMS powder of V x Zn 1− x O and Fe x Zn 1− x O were successfully prepared by MM method.