Magnetic property investigations on mn-doped ZnO layers on sapphire

The need for diluted magnetic semiconductors has stimulated research on Mn-doped ZnO. However, the type of magnetic coupling (ferro/para) in ZnMnO remains an issue of debate. We have investigated the magnetic properties of Mn-doped ZnO layers grown by molecular beam epitaxy. Some samples showed a hysteresis with remnant magnetization on the order of 10(-5) emu, thus eventually suggesting ferromagnetism. We observed that the critical influence of the substrate substantially affects magnetic property measurements. This has to be taken into account in order to clearly confirm ferromagnetism. In our case, after subtraction of the substrate effect, there is no evidence of a ferromagnetic behavior for the ZnMnO samples.