Electrical bistability in monolayers of cobalt-doped ZnO nanocrystals: effect of alignment of their magnetic domains

Abstract

We grow a range of cobalt-doped ZnO nanocrystals, form a monolayer through electrostatic assembly approach, and characterize the nanostructures with a scanning tunneling microscope tip. The scanning tunneling spectroscopy results show electrical bistability, that is, presence of a low- and a high-conducting state, in such monolayers under application of a voltage pulse. The bistability depends on the content of cobalt in the nanocrystals. With the use of such ferromagnetic nanocrystals, we align the magnetization vector of the nanocrystals in a monolayer in order to study the effect of alignment of their magnetic domains on the electrical bistability. We observe that the transport gap of the nanocrystals decreases upon conductance switching. The gap decreases also due to alignment of the magnetic domains of the cobalt-doped nanocrystals. When the magnetically aligned nanocrystals undergo a conductance switching, the transport gap further decreases evidencing a correlation between the electrical bistability and the (change in) transport gap.