Magnetic Properties of Cu doped ZnO: X-ray Magnetic Circular Dichroism and Magneto-Optical Kerr Effect

Using the full potential linearized augmented plane wave (FLAPW) method, we explored the magnetic properties of 8.3 % Cu doped ZnO varying the relative position between two Cu atoms. We found that the Cu atom had a, magnetic moment of 0.6 mu(B) and that the Cu doped ZnO displays half metallic feature. It has been realized that the most stable magnetic ground state is achieved when the Cu dopants are placed in the same basal layer of the tetrahedron, not in the uniformly distributed structure. The X-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD) study shows that the spin polarized Cu atom has well separated L edge with a single peak feature. Moreover, the magneto-optical kerr effect (MOKE) was explored. The calculate kerr rotation angle is dependent on the relative distance of Cu atoms and the magnitude of kerr angle was about 0.5 degrees in the most stable structure. We have also found that the major contribution to the kerr angle stems from the interband part.