Abstract
In this paper, pure and rare earth Ce3+ ion doped nickel oxide nanoparticles, i.e. Ni1-xCexO(x = 0.00, 0.01, 0.03 and 0.05) have been successfully prepared by sol–gel method and qualitative studied the influence of Ce3+ ion on the optical and magnetic properties by the mean of Rietveld refined X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis, Raman spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy(FTIR), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), Ultraviolet (UV) visible spectroscopy, photoluminescence (PL), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM) as well as electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) measurement. XRD analysis confirmed the single crystalline phase of the prepared samples without any impurity phase and the average crystallite size calculated from the Scherrer method follows the same trend as obtained from the Williamson- Hall method. Further, PL spectra of doped NiO nanoparticles exhibit green emission related to oxygen vacancies and the emissions at 398.78 nm and 466.70 nm (Blue emission) due to the Ce3+ ion transitions 2D3/2–2F5/2 and 2D3/2–2F7/2 which are also extremely supported by CIE1961 chromaticity diagram. Through magnetic measurement, room temperature weak ferromagnetism is observed for all samples. Moreover, EPR analysis reveals the presence of unpaired electron where the field resonance decreases along with increased g value as the Ce concentration increases when compared to pure NiO. The present studies also suggest that Ni vacancy might be responsible for inducing weak ferromagnetism in NiO samples through the collective localized magnetic moment.
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