Synthesis and structural properties of vanadium doped zinc oxide

Abstract In this work, structural and morphological properties of vanadium doped zinc oxide (ZnO:V) pellets with different percentage of vanadium (2–10%) obtained by sol gel method have been investigated by X-ray diffraction, Raman spectroscopy and atomic force microscopy. XRD analysis showed that this samples are polycrystalline with a hexagonal wurtzite structure with (1 0 1) plane as the preferred orientation. The grain size of the pellets was increased with increasing concentration of vanadium. The atomic force microscopy shows a rough surface for all the pellets, we can see also that the surface roughness increases with increasing of doping concentration of 93–214 nm. Raman spectroscopy reveals a shift position in zinc oxide modes due to vanadium doping, the appearance of E 1 and E 2 modes showed that the wurtzite structure of ZnO is still maintained after doping of vanadium.