Structural and morphological properties of thermally evaporated Zn1-xMnxS nanocrystalline films

In recent years the dilute magnetic semiconductors have received much attention due to the complementary properties of semiconductor and ferromagnetic behaviour. Nanostructured Zn1-xMnxS films (0 <= x <= 0.25) were deposited on glass substrates at room temperature (300 K) using simple resistive thermal evaporation technique. All the deposited films were characterized by chemical, structural and morphological studies. Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) studies showed that all the films investigated were in nanocrystalline form with the grain size lying in the range 8 - 22 nm. All the films exhibited cubic structure and the lattice parameter varied linearly with composition.