Supercritical CO2-Modulated Anisotropic Lattice Distortion in ZnSnO3 for Obtaining Room-Temperature Ferromagnetism

With the development of spintronics, ferromagnetic nanomaterials have shown unique advantages in the fields of information storage and quantum computation. The ABO3-type perovskite oxide ZnSnO3 is expected to realize d0 ferromagnetism due to its tunable crystal structure and unique electron arrangement. In this work, for the first time, the inhomogeneous oxygen octahedral structural distortion along the c-axis induced by SC CO2 can be found in 2D ZnSnO3, i.e., distortion of ZnO6 is larger than that of SnO6, and they are served as the structural basis for the generation of room-temperature ferromagnetism. In addition, combining the change in the concentration of the oxygen vacancies to ultimately realize the room-temperature d0 ferromagnetism in ZnSnO3 (Tc = 400 K, Ms = 0.1123 emu/g) can be presented. Therefore, this study establishes a new strategy for the development of transition metal-free ferromagnetic materials for the application of spintronic devices at room temperature.