  Recently, d0 ferromagnetic materials have been projected as one of the
promising novel materials for spintronics applications. In this work, we have
studied Li-doped ZnO compounds, i.e. Zn1-xLixO (x=0, 0.02, 0.04, and 0.06)
samples, prepared by the solid-state reaction route method. From the study of
crystal structure using X-ray diffraction (XRD) patterns, it is evident that
the prepared materials have been formed in a single-phase of the hexagonal
wurtzite structure. The refinement of the XRD patterns suggests that there are
very small changes in the lattice parameters upon Li-incorporation in ZnO. The
average crystallite size (SC), estimated from XRD patterns was found to be in
the range of 35-50 nm. The microstructural study by scanning electron
microscope reveals the uniform morphology of the grains of the order of 50-70
nm. The energy dispersive spectrum indicates that no unwanted ferromagnetic
impurities have crept into the final prepared samples. The measurement of the
temperature (T) variation of magnetization (M) with SQUID magnetometer
indicates that undoped ZnO exhibits diamagnetic property but all Li-doped
compounds exhibit room-temperature ferromagnetism and with a magnetic
irreversibility behavior between zero-field cooled and field cooled M-T data.
From the magnetization versus field measurements at 3 and 300 K, it is observed
that Li-doped samples exhibit ferromagnetic loops with ultra-soft coercivity
(~50 Oe) and with a maximum saturation magnetization of 0.10 emu/gm for x= 0.02
sample, which decreases with the increase in Li concentration.
