The effect of silver concentration and calcination temperature on structural and optical properties of ZnO:Ag nanoparticles
Abstract
Pure and silver added zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZnO-NPs and ZnO:Ag-NPs) were synthesized through a modified sol–gel method. The prepared samples were characterized using X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy. In the XRD patterns, silver diffracted peaks were also observed for the samples synthesized at different calcination temperatures of 500°C, 700°C, 900°C except 1100°C, in addition to ZnO. TEM images indicated that the average size of ZnO:Ag-NPs increases with the amount of Ag concentration. The PL spectra of the samples revealed that the increase of Ag concentration results in the increase of the visible emission intensity, whereas by increasing the calcination temperature the intensity of visible emission of the samples decreases.
