Characterization of mesoporous ZnO:SiO2 films obtained by the sol-gel method
Characterization of mesoporous ZnO:SiO2 films obtained by the sol-gel method
Martins, R. M. S.; Musat, V.; Mücklich, A.; Franco, N.; Fortunato, E.
ZnO:SiO2 films are intensively investigated for optical and electronic applications. Additionally, porous ZnO:SiO2 films are of great interest as catalyst and gas-sensing materials. The solgel method is an efficient and low-cost process for the deposition of meso- and microporous silica-based films. The present paper studies the effect of the withdrawal speed on the microstructure and optical properties of mesoporous ZnO:SiO2 films obtained by the solgel method. The morphology of the films was investigated by atomic force microscopy and the overall structure was studied by X-ray diffraction. The structure and size of the zinc oxide nanoparticles embedded in the silica matrix were investigated in more detail by transmission electron microscopy. These techniques showed ZnO:SiO2 films with crack-free mesoporous morphology and highly efficient embedding of ZnO nanoparticles with (100) preferred orientation. Furthermore, the optical transmittance (in the visible and near infrared regions) and the optical band gap value were observed to vary with withdrawal speed. It is shown that ZnO:SiO2 nanocomposites films which possess ZnO particles exhibiting a (100) orientation, with possible special applications in non-linear optics, could be prepared by the low-temperature crystallization solgel method.
Keywords: solgel; Zinc oxide; nanoparticles; silica matrix; thin films; mesoporous films; optical and electrical properties; X-ray diffraction; atomic force microscopy
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Thin Solid Films 518(2010), 7002-7006
DOI: 10.1016/j.tsf.2010.06.015
Cited 10 times in Scopus
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