Emission Mössbauer spectroscopy study of fluence dependence of paramagnetic relaxation in Mn/Fe implanted ZnO

Emission Mössbauer Spectroscopy following the implantation of radioactive precursor isotope $^{57}$Mn$^{+}$ (T$_{1/2}$= 1.5 min) into ZnO single crystals at ISOLDE/CERN shows that a large fraction of $^{57}$Fe atoms produced in the $^{57}$Mn beta decay is created as paramagnetic Fe$^{3+}$ with relatively long spin-lattice relaxation times. Here we report on ZnO pre-implanted with $^{56}$Fe to fluences of 2×10$^{13}$, 5×10$^{13}$ and 8 × 10$^{13}$ ions/cm2 in order to investigate the dependence of the paramagnetic relaxation rate of Fe$^{3+}$ on fluence. The spectra are dominated by magnetic features displaying paramagnetic relaxation effects. The extracted spin-lattice relaxation rates show a slight increase with increasing ion fluence at corresponding temperatures and the area fraction of $^{3+}$ at room temperature reaches a maximum contribution of 80(3)% in the studied fluence range.