TDPAC study of Cd-doped SnO

The combination of hyperfine techniques and ab initio calculations has been shown to be a powerful tool to unravel structural and electronic characterizations of impurities in solids. A recent example has been the study of Cd-doped SnO, where ab initio calculations questioned previous TDPAC assignments of the electric-field gradient (EFG) in 111In-implanted Sn-O thin films. Here we present new TDPAC experiments at 111In-diffused polycrystalline SnO. A reversible temperature dependence of the EFG was observed in the range 295-900 K. The TDPAC results were compared with theoretical calculations performed with the full-potential linearized augmented plane wave (FP-LAPW) method, in the framework of the density functional theory. Through the comparison with the theoretical results, we infer that different electronic surroundings around Cd impurities can coexist in the SnO sample.