LAUSR

The room temperature ferromagnetism along with a rare orange emission in ZnO with equally concentrated Li, Na and K dopants is discussed here. In this report the alkali dopants Li, Na and K are co-doped in ZnO by solution combustion technique and annealed to two different temperatures 500 °C and 800 °C. The XRD analysis reveals the hexagonal wurtzite structure and the substitution of the alkali in ZnO. The SEM and EDAX study shows the morphology and impurity free samples of alkali doped ZnO. The photoluminescence data brings the profuse interstitial O atoms to light that involves in orange emission. The oxygen vacancies are also responsible for a weak green emission that decreases and then increases with alkali content. There is also a weak UV emission due to bound acceptor–donor recombination. The VSM shows the ferromagnetic behavior of the samples and thereby establishes that the alkali doped ZnO turns to be a member of the family of dilute magnetic semiconductors.