The effect of oxygen vacancies on the hyperfine properties of metal-doped SnO2

We have performed a Mossbauer investigation of oxygen-vacancy formation on a doped substitutional solution of Sn1-yMyO2 (M = Al, Fe, Ce and Er) nanoparticles. Experimental results were assessed from Mossbauer spectroscopy data, which suggest the rise of the oxygen-vacancy population while increasing the content of dopant ions (M). Likewise, we have analyzed the dependence of the structural, electronic and hyperfine properties on the oxygen-vacancy concentration through first-principles calculations of the SnO2-x (where x varies from 0 to 0.25) system. The results obtained from the isomer shift and quadrupole splitting indicate a significant dependence of the hyperfine properties on the number of oxygen vacancies. Moreover, after structural optimization of the Sn16O32-Vo supercell (where Vo is the number of oxygen vacancies) we found an increase of the unit-cell volume with the increase of Vo, while the bulk modulus showed a linear decrease with Vo. Indeed, our results corroborate the experimental findings for pure and transition-metal-doped SnO2 systems for which the presence of the oxygen vacancy plays a key role.