Iron nanoparticles supported on graphene nanosheets by pulsed laser ablation method in deionized water

Abstract In this study, pulsed laser ablation process (PLA) in deionized water solution was used to prepare graphene oxide (GO) nanosheets, wustite (FeO) nanoparticles and GO based FeO nanoparticles. The effect of composition ratio of materials on their optical properties was studied. The structural properties of the materials were characterized using transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and x-ray diffraction (XRD) techniques. According to the TEM results, FeO nanoparticles were well deposited on GO nanosheets. The XRD results demonstrated the formation of Fe and wustite (FeO) phase of iron oxide nanoparticles. In the XRD analysis of graphene sample, graphene oxide (GO) and reduced graphene oxide (rGO) nanosheets were identified. The absorption measurement of the samples in colloidal state was performed using a UV–vis single beam spectrophotometer in the wavelength range of 250 to 800 nm. The higher and the lower absorbance belonged to 1.4 ml GO − 0.6 ml FeO composition and GO nanosheets, respectively. The linear optical properties of the samples, including the real and imaginary parts of the dielectric function, refractive index, extinction coefficient and absorption coefficient were calculated using the spectroscopic ellipsometry (SE) method. Leng oscillator was used as the optical model in SE method. Also, the energy band gap of the samples was calculated using Tauc relation, in which the lower and the higher energy band gaps were obtained for GO nanosheets (3.40 eV) and FeO nanoparticles (4.65 eV), respectively. Furthermore, the nonlinear optical properties of GO based FeO nanoparticles were investigated by Z-scan measurement. The nonlinear refractive index and nonlinear absorption coefficient were obtained in the order of 10−8 cm2 W−1 and 10–4 cm W−1, respectively.