Electrical and magnetic effect of transition metals in SnSb nanoalloy
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Date
2014
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Abstract
Influence of incorporating transition metal impurities such as Fe. Co and Ni on the magnetic and electrical
properties of SnSb alloy nanopowders synthesized by reductive co-precipitation is reported. Structural
elucidation of all the samples by X-ray diffraction (XRD) confirms hexagonal structure and the morphological
observations through scanning electron microscope (SEM) show a minimal particle size of
20 nm for the Co substituted SnSb sample, among all the other impurity incorporated samples. Compositional
confirmation of Sn, Sb, Fe, Co, and Ni was made using EDAX. The X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy
(XPS) is used to investigate the surface of SnSb and the change in surface activity due to the addition
of transition metal impurities. The magnetic hysteresis studies indicate that SnSb and SnSb:Ni exhibit
diamagnetic behaviour; while the Fe and Co incorporation resulted in ferromagnetic nature. The conductivity
of SnSbiFe, SnSb:Ni shows a semiconducting nature with negative temperature coefficient of
resistance; whereas pure and Co substitution exhibit metallic behaviour with positive temperature coefficient
of resistance. The switching of metallic to semiconducting regime is explained in this paper. Also
an attempt has been made to correlate electrical and magnetic properties with the surface oxidation
effect through XPS data.