The Structural Changes and Its Impact on Optical Dispersion of PVA/PVP Embedded with Zinc Sulphate Nanoparticles and Irradiated with Electron-Beam

Abstract

PVA/PVP films doped with zinc sulphate heptahydrate (ZnSO4·7H2O) nanoparticles (NPs) are prepared using an in situ chemical method. Furthermore, as-prepared samples are irradiated with an electron beam at doses of 20, 25, 30, 35, and 40 kGy. Elemental analyses using energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDXS) of the fresh films showed the existence of both zinc oxide and zinc sulphide as main and minor phases in sequence. Moreover, scanning electron microscope measurements (SEM) revealed that embedded Zn NPs have regular and evenly distributed pores inside PVA/PVP network. On the other hand, the structural variations due to e-beam irradiation are monitored by a high-resolution-transmission electron microscope (HR-TEM), which displayed that encapsulated Zn NPs are well dispersed and capped inside PVA/PVP structural network. The measured optical absorption coefficient (α) of PVA/PVP/zinc sulphate nanocomposite films showed an increase against e-beam dose. Moreover, the calculated optical energy gap, Eg, exhibited a reduction from 3.31 to 2.82 eV against the increase in irradiation dose. Evaluated values of wavelength at zero material dispersion (WZMD) indicated that e-beam irradiation can tune the structure of the studied samples to be used as a data transmitter in optical fiber telecommunication in the IR spectral range of 1.6842–1.0351 μm.