THz conductivity of semi-insulating and magnetic CoFe2O4 nano-hollow structures through thermally activated polaron.

Autor: Rakshit, Rupali, Kazunori Serita, Masayoshi Tonouchi, Mandal, Kalyan
Předmět:
Zdroj: Journal of Applied Physics; 2016, Vol. 120 Issue 20, p1-11, 11p, 3 Diagrams, 4 Charts, 5 Graphs
Abstrakt: Herein, terahertz (THz) time domain spectroscopy is used to measure the complex conductivity of semi-insulating CoFe2O4 nanoparticles (NPs) and nano-hollow spheres (NHSs) with different diameters ranging from 100 to 350 nm having a nanocrystalline shell thickness of 19 to 90 nm, respectively. Interestingly, the magnitude of conductivity for CoFe2O4 NPs and NHSs of same average diameter (∼100 nm) for a given frequency of 0.3 THz is found to be 0.33 S/m and 9.08 S/m, respectively, indicating that the hollow structure exhibits greater THz conduction in comparison to its solid counterpart. Moreover, THz conductivity can be tailored by varying the nano-shell thickness of NHSs, and a maximum conductivity of 15.61 S/m is observed at 0.3 THz for NHSs of average diameter 250 nm. A detailed study reveals that thermally activated polaronic hopping plays the key role in determining the electrical transport property of CoFe2O4 nanostructures, which is found to solely depend on their magnitude of THz absorptivity. The non-Drude conductivity of all CoFe2O4 nanostructures is well described by the Polaron model instead of the Drude-Smith model, which is relevant for backscattering of free electrons in a nanostructured material. The Polaron model includes intra-particle and interparticle polaronic conductivities for closely spaced magnetic nanostructures and provides a mean free path of 29nm for CoFe2O4 NPs of diameter 100nm, which is comparable with its average crystallite size, indicating the applicability of the developed model for nanomaterials where charge transport is determined by polaronic hopping. Finally, we have demonstrated the morphology and size dependent magnetic measurements of ferrimagnetically aligned CoFe2O4 nanostructures through a vibrating sample magnetometer in the temperature range of 80-250 K, revealing that the disordered surface spin layer of nanostructures significantly controls their magnetism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Databáze: Complementary Index