Research Progress in ZnO Dilute Magnetic Semiconductors Doped by Mn or Co

ZnO dilute magnetic semiconductor (DMS) is a new kind of material, promising to be integrated into semiconductors. Meanwhile, ZnO DMS possessing the room temperature ferromagnetism (RTFM) could not only reduce the volume of electronic components and increase the integration density, but also improve the transmission efficiency greatly. At present, the preparing technology of ZnO DMS with the RTFM is poor in repeatability, and there is no unified theory to explain the magnetic origin. In order to sort out the magnetic properties of ZnO DMS prepared by different experimental methods and their origin, this paper has been reviewed the last 10 years investigations, including preparing technology, magnetic properties and magnetic origin of pure ZnO, Mn or Co and Mn-Co co-doped ZnO. And it is believed that the doping of transition metal ions in the preparation processing will improve the RTFM of ZnO DMS effectively. And the RTFM will be achieved stably in a lower content of Mn or Co doped ZnO systems. Besides, in order to better understand the origin of magnetism, it must be explored from the atomic scale combining with experiments and theoretical calculations.