A facile synthesis of graphene oxide–ZnS/ZnO nanocomposites and observations of thermal quenching of visible photoluminescence emission and nonlinear optical properties

Abstract

Here we have reported a facile synthesis of graphene oxide–ZnS/ZnO nanocomposite and the temperature dependent photoluminescence (PL) emissions in the synthesized materials, which are scarcely been available in the literature. In the present work PL emission in GO and its composites with ZnS and ZnO semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) have been measured at variable temperatures in 283–353K temperature region. From the measured results it has been found that quenching of PL emission has been taken place in the composite sample and it has been proposed that as the temperature is increased, the excited electrons in the localized states formed by the sp2 clusters in GO can migrate to the nearby sp3 defects states, thereby the intensity of PL emission is reduced. Nonlinear Optical (NLO) properties as well as the optical limiting (OL) properties has also been studied by using an indigenously developed Z-scan technique with a 10ns laser pulse at 1064nm laser radiation. Two photon absorptions (2PA) behavior have been found to be the dominant mechanism in the synthesized samples. A suitable energy level scheme has been proposed to explain the observed PL emission behavior as well as the 2PA mechanism. The present report will open up a lot of prospects for synthesizing GO-semiconductor nanocomposites with semiconductor materials as well as for potential applications in future luminescent devices.