Structural, optical and magnetization studies of Fe-doped CaSnO 3 nanoparticles via hydrothermal route

This paper deals with the systematic investigation of microstructure, optical and magnetic properties of Fe doped CaSnO3 nanostructures prepared by facile hydrothermal route. Detailed structural analysis using XRD, FTIR and Raman analysis reveals the formation of orthorhombic CaSnO3 with pnma space group. Optical absorption studies authenticates the tuning of optical band gap upto 1 eV was achieved by varying Fe concentration in Ca–Sn–O lattice. Presence of oxygen vacancies and defects in the grown nanostructures were supported by PL and EPR studies. Room temperature M-H loops implies clear occurrence of room temperature ferromagnetism in all the Fe doped nanostructures and the saturated magnetization (Ms) increases with increase in Fe doping. The magnetization behaviour was explained based on F-centre exchange interactions mediated by oxygen vacancies. The overall findings open up a pathway to tune the ferromagnetism as well as bandgap of stannate systems by varying the concentration of transition metal dopants.