Structural and optical properties of co-doped ZnO (V, Dy) nanoparticles synthesized by sol-gel

Abstract

In the present work, sol–gel process was used for the synthesisof Zn0.99-xV0.01DyxO (x = 0.00, 0.04 and 0.08). We studied the impact of doping on the physical properties of the synthesized nanoparticles. In our synthetic approach, under an esterification reaction the release of water was carried out slowly, this step was followed by drying beyond the critical point of ethanol then by calcination in air at 500°C for 2 hours. The structural and morphological studies show the presence of wurtzite structure with an average crystallite size of about 30 nm. In addition, no secondary phase was detected, which shows that the doping elements reacted with the matrix. The reflectance measurements show that by increasing the doping concentration the energy of the band gap energy decreases. Photoluminescence (PL) indicates the presence of two emission bands situated at at around 481 nm and 577 nm linked to doping with Dy.