Magneto-optical effect phenomenon (MO) has been widely utilized in the physics field. When the light is passing through or gets reflected by the magnetic sample, the polarization of the transmission or reflection light would rotate a small angle comparing with the polarization of the incident light. Since reflectance difference spectroscope has the unique advantage to measure the small polarization rotation angles after passing the anisotropic samples, it has shown its great potential in the magneto-optical studies since its invention. ZnO thin film has a wide band gap and high exciton binding energy with a non-centered wurtzite structure. These unique properties make it a promising material for their applications as sensors, transducers and catalysts and have attracted much attention i...[ Read more ]

Magneto-optical effect phenomenon (MO) has been widely utilized in the physics field. When the light is passing through or gets reflected by the magnetic sample, the polarization of the transmission or reflection light would rotate a small angle comparing with the polarization of the incident light. Since reflectance difference spectroscope has the unique advantage to measure the small polarization rotation angles after passing the anisotropic samples, it has shown its great potential in the magneto-optical studies since its invention. ZnO thin film has a wide band gap and high exciton binding energy with a non-centered wurtzite structure. These unique properties make it a promising material for their applications as sensors, transducers and catalysts and have attracted much attention in the research field.

In this thesis, the basic principle of the reflectance difference spectroscopy technique and magneto-optical effect are introduced first. The experimental setup and measurement method related with the magnetization in C-doped Zinc oxide thin film are also included in the thesis.

Magnetic domains are observed in C-doped Zinc Oxide layers grown on Si substrates. The in-plane magnetization and off-plane magnetization can be discriminated by changing the size of the aperture between the objective lens and the sample surface. Also, the influences of external magnetic field and low temperature to magnetic domains of ZnO thin film are discussed in the thesis too.