Hydrothermal synthesis Ni-doped ZnO nanorods with room-temperature ferromagnetism

Diluted magnetic semiconductors Zn1 − xNixO nanorods with nominal Ni doping concentrations of x = 0%, 1%, 5%, and 10% have been synthesized by a simple hydrothermal route. XRD and high-resolution TEM characterizations indicated that the as-prepared samples were single-crystalline wurtzite structure and no metallic Ni or other secondary phases were found in the nanorods. The field dependence of magnetization (M–H curve) measured at room temperature exhibited the obvious ferromagnetic characteristic. The saturation magnetization and coercive field (HC) were obtained to be 0.4 emu/g and ∼ 72 Oe for ZnO0.95Ni0.05O nanorods. The room-temperature ferromagnetism of the synthesized Zn1 − xNixO nanorods makes them potentially useful as build components for spintronic devices.