Dr. Farrakh Shahzad from Pakistan has rejoined the institute of Physics for his post-doc research project under the Ernst-Mach follow up grant by ӦAD, Austria. Earlier, he had completed his doctoral thesis from Institute of Physics, Karl-Franzens University, Graz, Austria. In Pakistan, he is working as Assistant Professor in Department of Physics, COMSATS University, Islamabad. His research work is related to magnetic and Raman measurements of NiO nanoparticles.
Single crystals of NiO are antiferromagnetic with a Néel temperature of 523K. Raman spectra of this material show a peak at about 1500cm-1 arising from a 2-Magnon (2M) excitation which is directly related to the antiferromagnetism. The Raman behavior of the 2M excitation for bulk material is rather well understood but no comprehensive work is available for the 2M behavior of NiO nanoparticles. Our goal is to investigate 2M peak behavior of NiO nanoparticles. This research work will be further extended to doped NiO nanoparticles, where 2M peak feature will be investigated for NiO nanoparticles doped with different elements like Fe, Mn, Co etc..