Ahmed Nabil Halawani
Dar Althiker School, Jeddah, SAUDI ARABIA
2001 was the year when the Polish scientist, T. Dietl, proposed doping wide band-gap
semiconductors with a magnetic materials would generate ferromagnetism. Scientists have started
to dope semiconductors with magnetic materials to create magnetism and semiconducting combined
in a single material system, Diluted Magnetic Semiconductors (DMSs). These materials have
potential applications in Spintronic devices. However, these new materials do not often show
ferromagnetic properties above room temperature. In this work, Gd 1.0wt% doped with ZnO thin films were prepared by the pulsed laser deposition technique and then characterized via XRD, SEM and SQUID- magnetometer. XRD shows that the best growth of the film is along the c-axis of the hexagonal Wurtzite structure. SEM micrograph shows that these films are polycrystalline with multiple grains. Magnetization loops at 5K and at 300K confirm ferromagnetism in the sample. Gd at 0.04at% and oxygen pressure at 20 mTorr got a tremendous magnetization of 12.35 μB. The origin of ferromagnetism was attributed to oxygen vacancy mediated via formation of polarons. The applications of this research are to decrease the prices of modern technology and to increase its efficiency. Also, altering the spin of the electrons can create data; it can be saved in the spin, even without electricity, and in a very tiny thin film ( >200nm). This project can be used in the medical field, by attaching the material with bacteria that is attracted to cancer cells, cancer can be detected by scanning the body with MRI after injecting the bacteria. Awards won at the 2013 ISEF Third Award of $500 - American Association of Physics Teachers and the American Physical Society