Document Type : Research
Authors
1 Physics Department, Faculty of Science, Malayer University
2 Physics Department, Faculty of Science, Razi University
3 Department of Soil Science, Faculty of Agriculture, Malayer University
Abstract
In this study, zinc oxide nano-sheets were prepared via the sol-gel method using zinc nitrate as the precursor salt, that pure and doped zinc oxide nanostructure were synthesized with cheap materials and in an easy and available method with low laboratory equipment and in a very short period of time. Subsequently, the samples were doped with iron and copper impurities. The structural and morphological properties of the prepared samples were determined using X-ray diffraction (XRD), field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR). The XRD results indicated that the zinc oxide nanoparticles in all samples adopted a wurtzite crystal structure without any additional peaks observed. The functional groups and chemical interactions of the zinc oxide samples were also determined at various peaks using FT-IR data, confirming the presence of Zn-O bonds in the samples as observed by XRD. The analysis of FESEM revealed that the impurities led to the formation of different morphologies for each sample. It can be concluded that the type of impurities influences the morphological changes while the structure remains unchanged. To investigate the band-gap, UV-Visible spectroscopy was employed, showing a decrease in the band-gap of the samples with increasing impurities.
Keywords
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