Deposition of ZnO Nanocrystals on Fe3O4 Nanocubes and Their Special Luminescent and Magnetic Properties

With increasing miniaturization, it is extremely important to maintain the magnetization stability at small scale. Herein, more efforts and interests focus on the interface of magnetic core and semiconductor shell to obtain desired magnetic and/or luminescent properties. Here, Fe₃O₄ nanocubes are synthesized via a thermal decomposition followed by coating ZnO nanocrystals. To create a large interface, large Fe₃O₄ nanocubes with 78 ± 3 nm average side‐length are synthesized through adjusting the ratio of iron precursor to stabilizer. The average diameter of the particular ZnO nanostructures coated on the nanocubic Fe₃O₄ is around 10 ± 2 nm. In addition to the photoluminescent properties of the ZnO‐coated nanostructures, core‐shell Fe₃O₄@ZnO nanostructures demonstrate enhanced UV absorption at 360 nm, which has a 20 nm blueshift compared to bulk ZnO. The superparamagnetic properties of Fe₃O₄@ZnO core–shell hybrid nanocrystals at room temperature are dominated by the ferromagnetic properties when the temperature is lower than the Blocking temperature, 235.7 K. The observed exchange bias and temperature‐dependent magnetization can result from the interfacial interphase between ZnO and Fe₃O₄. The anisotropy contributed by the interfacial interphase allows the nanostructures to maintain stable magnetization in miniaturized devices.