Ferromagnetism induced by oxygen and cerium vacancies above the percolation limit in CeO₂

Abstract

We studied the structural, chemical and magnetic properties of non-doped ceria (CeO(2)) thin films electrodeposited on silicon substrates. Experimental results confirm that the observed room temperature ferromagnetism is driven by both cerium and oxygen vacancies. We investigated ceria films presenting vacancy concentrations well above the percolation limit. Irradiation experiments with neon ions were employed to generate highly oxygen defective CeO(2-δ) structures. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and x-ray absorption near-edge structure spectroscopy were used to estimate the concentration of Ce(3+) sites in the films, which can reach up to 50% of Ce(3+) replacing Ce(4+), compared to a stoichiometric CeO(2) structure. Despite the increment of structural disorder, we observe that the saturation magnetization continuously increases with Ce(3+) concentration. Our experiments demonstrate that the ferromagnetism observed in ceria thin films, highly disordered and oxygen-deficient, preserving the fluorite-type structure only in a nanometer scale, remains intrinsically stable at room temperature.