Intrinsic room temperature ferromagnetism in boron-doped ZnO

We report room temperature ferromagnetism in boron-doped ZnO both experimentally and theoretically. The single phase Zn1-xBxO films deposited under high oxygen pressure by pulsed laser deposition show ferromagnetic behavior at room temperature. The saturation magnetization increases monotonically from 0 to 1.5 emu/cm(3) with the increasing boron component x from 0% to 6.8%. The first-principles calculations demonstrate that the ferromagnetism in the B-doped ZnO originates from the induced magnetic moment of oxygen atoms in the nearest neighbor sites to B-Zn vacancy pairs. The calculated total magnetic moment shows an increasing trend with the boron component which is consistent with experiment. (C) 2010 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3524493]