Doping effect of Zn on structural and optical properties of CuO nanostructures prepared by wet chemical precipitation process

Abstract CuO exhibits superior properties in semiconducting technology. The preparation with thermal activation can be found in several previous reports. Consequently, the synthesizing process at room temperature is interesting because of no energy consumption, reducing production costs. For material property modification, incorporated metal atoms affect the morphology and properties of the host lattice. Accordingly, the purpose of this work is to study the consequence of Zn doping on the structural and optical properties of CuO, prepared via room temperature synthesizing process of wet chemical precipitation without further calcination. Various analytical techniques studied crystal structure, morphology, chemical composition, and optical properties. X-ray Diffraction (XRD) analysis revealed the formation of a pure monoclinic CuO phase with crystallite size in the range of 25–38 nm. As increasing Zn content, structural and optical properties of doped CuO were changed comparing with pure CuO. Scanning electron microscope (SEM) displayed morphology transformation from irregular plates to nanoparticles. TEM images elucidated the formation of crystals in the different directions of block aggregation. Specific surface area (SSA) revealed a reducing value from 17.2567 to 16.6128 m2/g. PL emission assigned to near band-edge emission at 445 nm and oxygen vacancy existence at 519 nm. Comparison with pristine CuO, PL intensity quenching was found in doped CuO. The reduction of electron-hole recombination corresponds to the increasing energy bandgap with linear tendency, appearing at 2.80–2.94 eV. Finally, this synthesizing route is effective and can extend synthesizing technology to other doped metal oxide nanostructures.