SYNTHESIS AND CHARACTERIZATION OF Al DOPED ZnO NANOPARTICLES

Undoped and Al-doped ZnO (AZO) nanoparticles (NPs) have been successfully synthesized by the simple sol-gel method. The NPs have been characterized by a number of techniques as x-ray diffraction (XRD), UV-visible spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) at room temperature for 0%, 0.5%, 1% and 2% of Al concentration. The structural characteristics were examined using XRD and SEM with EDS. XRD analysis reveals that all samples crystallizes in polycrystalline nature with wurtzite lattice and exhibit no other impurity phase. The average crystallite size decreases with increase in Al concentration. The absorption spectra indicate increase in optical energy gap (E g ) with increase in Al ion doped into the ZnO lattice site.