Origin of room temperature ferromagnetism in MgO films

We report a systematic study of the crystallinity dependence of room-temperature ferromagnetism (RTFM) in pure MgO thin films prepared by pulsed laser deposition. A sequential transition from ferromagnetism to diamagnetism as a function of deposition temperature is observed. All the samples deposited from room temperature (RT) to 200 °C show clear RTFM, and the magnetization decreases monotonically with the increase of the substrate temperature, whereas the MgO film grown at 300 °C shows diamagnetism behavior like bulk MgO sample. The maximum saturation magnetization of 8 emu/cm3 is obtained for the MgO film deposited at RT, which degrades dramatically after crystallization under the annealing in both vacuum and air atmosphere. Further photoluminescence and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopies reveal that the ferromagnetism in the MgO thin films is correlated directly with the Mg vacancies.