Abstract
For the first time, this work presents a novel room temperature time-effective concept to manipulate the crystallization kinetics and magnetic responses of thin films grown on amorphous substrates. Conventionally, metal-induced crystallization is adopted to minimize the crystallization temperature of the upper-layer thin film. However, due to the limited surface area of the continuous metal under-layer, the degree of crystallization is insufficient and post-annealing is required. To expose a large surface area of the metal under-layer, we propose a simple and novel approach of using an Au nanodots array instead of a continuous metallic under-layer to obtain crystallization of upper-layer thin films. Spinel cobalt ferrite (CFO) thin film as a 'model' was deposited on an Au nano-dots array to realize this methodology. Our findings revealed that the addition of quantum-sized Au nano-dots as a metal under-layer dramatically enhanced the crystallization of the cobalt ferrite upper layer at room temperature. The appearance of major X-ray diffraction peaks with high intensity and well-defined crystallized lattice planes observed via transmission electron microscopy confirmed the crystallization of the CFO thin film deposited at room temperature on 4 nm-sized Au nano-dots. This crystallized CFO thin film exhibits 18-fold higher coercivity (H c = 4150 Oe) and 4-fold higher saturation magnetization (M s = 262 emu cm -3 ) compared to CFO deposited without the Au under-layer. The development of this novel concept of room-temperature crystallization without the aid of additives and solvents represents a crucial breakthrough that is highly significant for exploring the green and energy-efficient synthesis of a variety of oxide and metal thin films.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 516-525 |
| Number of pages | 10 |
| Journal | Nanoscale Horizons |
| Volume | 4 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2019 Mar |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:One of the authors (SES) is very thankful to the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science for providing the financial support (Grant-in-Aid) for scientific research. The computational resources were provided by the Integrated Materials Design Centre at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. The authors are thankful to ANSTO for providing PNR measurements through proposal no. 6670 (2018). This work was also supported by the Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellow (grant FT150100479). This work was performed in part at the Queensland node of the Australian National Fabrication Facility, a company established under the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy to provide nano and micro-fabrication facilities for Australia’s researchers.
Funding Information:
One of the authors (SES) is very thankful to the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science for providing the financial support (Grant-in-Aid) for scientific research. The computational resources were provided by the Integrated Materials Design Centre at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. The authors are thankful to ANSTO for providing PNR measurements through proposal no. 6670 (2018). This work was also supported by the Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellow (grant FT150100479). This work was performed in part at the Queensland node of the Australian National Fabrication Facility, a company established under the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy to provide nano and micro-fabrication facilities for Australia's researchers.
Publisher Copyright:
This journal is © The Royal Society of Chemistry.
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- Materials Science(all)