Synthesis by co-precipitation method, structural and optical properties of ZnO and nickel doped ZnO nanoparticles

The structural and optical properties of Ni doped ZnO nanoparticles (NPs) prepared by co-precipitation method have been investigated. The X-ray diffraction pattern confirmed synthesized nanoparticles retained the wurtzite hexagonal structure. From FESEM studies, ZnO and Ni doped ZnO NPs showed Spherical & nanorod mixed phase morphology for undoped and Ni doped ZnO NPs respectively. The amount of dopant (Ni2+) incorporated into ZnO sample was determined by EDAX. The FT-IR spectra confirmed the Zn-O stretching bands at 444 and 451cm-1 for ZnO and Ni doped ZnO NPs. Optical absorption measurements show an absorption peak at 376 and 374 nm which was due to excitonic absorption of the pure ZnO and Ni doped ZnO NPs respectively The photoluminescence measurements revealed that the broad emission was composed of seven different bands due to zinc vacancies, oxygen vacancies and surface defects.