Impact of Annealing and Doping on the Structural and Optical Characteristics of Copper Oxide (CuO) Nanopowders Synthesized by Sol –gel Method.
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.63746/njtd.v23i1.4067Keywords:
Annealing, Copper Oxide, Optical properties, Nanopowders, Sol-gel, X-ray diffractionAbstract
In this study, pure copper oxide (CuO) and zinc oxide (ZnO) doped CuO nanopowders were prepared using the sol-gel chemical preparation method and Copper chloride dihydrate (CuCl2, 2H2O) used as precursor. To study the structural and morphological properties of the prepared powders, X-ray diffraction (XRD), Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and infrared spectroscopy (IR) were used, while to study the optical properties, a UV-visible spectrophotometer was employed. XRD analysis showed the presence of the monoclinic structure of CuO and the wurtzite (hexagonal) structure of ZnO for powders doped with 7% and 10% ZnO. It was also observed that the grain size increases with the increase in annealing temperature and increase in ZnO concentration. Moreover, the study of the optical properties of pure CuO powder revealed that the band gap values range between 3.88 eV and 3.89 eV.
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