EFFECT OF NICKEL OXIDE DOPING CONCENTRATION ON STRUCTURAL AND MORPHOLOGICAL PROPERTIES OF ZINC OXIDE PREPARED BY PRECIPITATION METHOD

Abstract

Zinc oxide (ZnO) is one of the most important II-VI semiconducting materials with wide band gap, whose nanostructures and nanoparticles have attracted the attention and research efforts of many material scientists due to its broad range of applications. This study aimed to examine how nickel oxide (NiO) content affects the structural and morphological properties of the ZnO. Undoped ZnO and NiO-doped ZnO were synthesized using precipitation method at various mol % concentration of NiO. The synthesized NiO-doped ZnO was characterized by the following techniques: Powdered X-ray diffraction analysis (PXRD), Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) with Energy Dispersive X-ray Analysis (EDX) and Fourier transformed infra-red spectroscopy (FTIR), respectively to investigate the phase structure, morphological structure together with elemental existence and chemical bond of the prepared samples. XRD patterns revealed that ZnO particles have a hexagonal wurtzite structure and NiO particles have a cubic structure with the estimated crystallite size of 40.6 – 47.6 nm. The Ni ion was successfully incorporated into the Zn lattice, confirmed by (101) peak shifting from the XRD results. The microscopy image exhibits the presence of thin nanoflake structures. The results indicated that the nanoflakes structures agglomerate and become more prominent as molar concentration increases. The elemental compositions of Zn, Ni, and O are confirmed by EDX analysis. The various mol % concentration of NiO to ZnO was found significantly affected the phase structure and morphological properties of the obtained sample. Overall, this work is of great significance for understanding the effect of doping concentration towards promising areas of application such as photocatalysis, gas sensors and solar cells.