Investigation of Multifunctional Behaviour and Photoresponse Properties of Some Optoelectronic Nanomaterials

Abstract

Research on nanomaterials has been evolutionized in the last few years because of the attractive properties they have in comparison to the bulk phase of similar materials. These properties are physical, chemical, catalytic and optical. Among these nanomaterials, the metal oxide nanostructures ZnO, TiO2 and SnO2 are attractive materials because of their unique properties; their high surface area to volume ratio, their energy band gap of 3.37 eV, 3.2 eV and 3.7 eV, respectively, biocompatibility, high electron mobility, fast electron transfer rate and they are environmental-friendly in many applications. TiO2 and ZnO had continued to attract a particular interest in the research and industry communities. TiO2 and ZnO present a high photo-catalytic activity, good chemical stability, non- or low-toxicity, low cost, and more or less long term photo stability. The multifunctional titanium di oxide (TiO2), tin oxide (SnO2), zinc oxide (ZnO) nanomaterials and doping of these nanomaterials with other elements like cobalt, graphene oxide etc. synthesized by sol-gel and co-precipitation methods. The prepared nanomaterials have been characterized by using different characterization techniques which include X- Ray diffraction (XRD) for structural analysis, Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) for morphology and compositional analysis, UV- visible spectroscopy and photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy for optical studies. The elemental analysis was done by X- ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). The structural, optical, photoluminescence properties of synthesized nanostructures have been investigated. The synthesis of different morphologies of these metal oxide semiconductor nanostructures and by the combination of their composite nanostructures by using the Co-precipitation, Sol-Gel, hydrothermal methods, etc. which will be demonstrated for various applications such as photo-catalytic activity and photo anode materials in dye sensitized solar cells.