XAS study of the local environment of impurities in doped TiO2 thin films

In this work, we present an X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) characterization of the local environment of the impurity in room temperature ferromagnetic (RTF) anatase TiO2 thin films doped with Co, Ni, Cu, or Zn, deposited on LaAlO3 substrate by pulsed laser deposition (PLD). It was found that there is a considerable amount of impurity atoms substituting Ti in TiO2 anatase, although the presence of metal transition monoxide clusters can not be discarded. From our results, we infer that the observed RT ferromagnetism of the samples could be assigned to the metal transition atoms replacing Ti in TiO2 anatase.