Synthesis and characterization of coupled semiconductor metal oxide (ZnO/CuO) nanocomposite

Synthesis of ZnO‐CuO Nanocomposite Aerogels by the Sol‐Gel Route

“…Hexagonal but thin platelets were reported in annealed ZnO under similar conditions [10], whereas the reported annealed CuO aerogels were composed of dense clusters with rough and uneven particles [11]. Similar but largely aggregated irregular, spherical, and elongated (nanorods) ZnO-CuO nanoparticles were reported in [24,28,[40][41][42]; reference [28] conveyed elongations of nanorods with decreasing copper content: from an average length of 75 nm to 500 nm as copper salt content decreased from 50 wt% to 1 wt%. Thus, it may be suggested that the polygonized particles and the nanorods are ZnO particles.…”

“…To our knowledge, this is the first ZnO-CuO nanocomposite aerogel of its kind. Previously, a variety of synthesis methods have produced various ZnO-CuO nanostructures, such as equilateral spherical or polyhedral nanoparticles [24,28,[40][41][42], nanowires [23,34], nanorods [28], nanoflakes [23], ZnO nanoplates mixed with CuO nanoparticles [29], porous flower-like microstructures [37], flower-like ZnO microstructures and some leaf-like CuO nanopatches [33], and CuO nanoflowers on ZnO nanorods [39], in addition to hierarchal structures achieved by multistep fabrication techniques, for example, core-shell nanorods [31], corn-like nanorods [32], nanocorals [38], CuO decorating ZnO nanorods [31], CuO nanoparticles on ZnO nanotetrapod [35], and CuO nanoaggregates on ZnO nanorods [36]. Our results will further shed light on the fabrication of free-standing nanocomposite aerogels via the sol-gel route for their application in future multifunctional applications.…”

“…It has been reported that the sensitivity for CO gas detection was significantly improved for a composite CuO-ZnO nanostructured film [34]. Nanostructured ZnO-CuO composites have been synthesized by several methods, for instance, thermal decomposition [24,28], coprecipitation methods [30,33,42], oxidizing brass in air [23] or in alkaline vapor [39], hydrothermal methods [29,34,37,38], a hydrothermal method followed by photo-deposition [32], plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition followed by radio frequency sputtering [31,36], sol-gel film coating methods [40,41], and thermal evaporation followed by impregnation [35]. Most methods included a final annealing step for the formation of the desired metal oxides [30-32, 35-37, 40-42].…”

Study of blueshift of optical band gap in stannic oxide nanosheets by an uncharged surfactant mediated alcohothermal process

“…Semiconductor metal oxide (SMO) nanostructures such as rutile, zincite, copper oxide and stannic oxide have been the subjects of scientific and technological attention due to their various physical and chemical properties [1][2][3]. Of these materials, SnO 2 nanostructures have many attractive optical properties due to the broad band gap, compared to the other SMO nanostructures [1][2][3], and hence could be used for optoelectronic devices, solar cells, alkali-ion batteries, and catalysts, etc.…”

“…Of these materials, SnO 2 nanostructures have many attractive optical properties due to the broad band gap, compared to the other SMO nanostructures [1][2][3], and hence could be used for optoelectronic devices, solar cells, alkali-ion batteries, and catalysts, etc. [3][4][5].…”