Structural, optical and magnetic properties of Cu-doped ZrO2 films synthesized by electrodeposition method

The electrodeposition technique was used to synthesize copper-doped ZrO2 thin film. Different characterization technique such as vibrating sample magnetometry, UV-visible spectroscopy, scanning electron microscope, and X-ray diffractometry were used to study the magnetic, optical, surface morphology, and structural properties of the thin films. The Uniform nanocrystalline grains without cracks, and of various sizes were obtained. The optical studies showed a decrease in energy band gap from 4.1 eV to 3.9 eV. The magnetic studies revealed that the doped samples have unique ferromagnetic ordering, this could be due to the increase in grain size. The 2% and 4% doped samples are saturated around 4.51 x 10(-4) emu/g and 4.70 x 10(-4) emu/g at coercive field of 274.54 and 274.96 respectively.