Cu2O/ZnO/Ag3PO4TERNARY OXIDE NANOCOMPOSITE: SYNTHESIS, CHARACTERIZATION AND OPTOELECTRONIC PROPERTIES.

Abstract

In this work, a nanoparticle of pure ZnO and heterostructures of Cu2O/ZnO, Ag3PO4/ZnO and Cu2O/ZnO/Ag3PO4with different ratios of precursor salts were prepared by simple precipitation method. Modern characterization instruments such as X-ray diffractometer (XRD), UV-Vis spectroscopy, Spectro fluorophotometerandBrunauer–Emmett–Teller(BET) were used to characterize the synthesized powders. Crystal sizes of all the prepared powders were examined using XRD. The average crystal size of the prepared powders was calculated based upon the intense peak, using the DubyeScherrer equation. The BET method was used to analyze the surface area of the prepared powders. Based on BET and XRD results, Cu2O/ZnO/Ag3PO4with metal ratio of (15:70:15) was selected among ternary nanocomposites for further characterization. UV- Vis spectroscopy was employed to estimate band gap energies of prepared powders. The room temperature Spectro fluorophotometer was used to measure the optical emissions from the synthesized powders as electrons return to the ground state. The result shows that the emission intensity of Cu2O/ZnO/Ag3PO4 is smaller than ZnO, Cu2O/ZnO and Ag3PO4/ZnO, which indicates that the electron hole recombination rate in the ternary nanocomposite is less than that of a pure nanoparticle and binary nanocomposite. In general, the nanocomposite semiconductor have better absorption in visible region than the pure/single nanoparticle. Therefore, the heterojunctions of three semiconductor are better for optical device application in visible light region