Investigational analysis on irradiated MgO–TiO2 binary oxide

Abstract

The effect of gamma irradiation on the features of pure magnesium oxide MgO, titanium oxide TiO2 and MgO-TiO2 binary oxides synthesized by sol-gel method with different MgO molar ratios have been investigated. The irradiated and un-irradiated oxides were characterized by Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), UV–vis spectroscopy and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). The induced changes in the FTIR spectra of both un-irradiated and irradiated samples were observed by a slight shift in the transmittance spectra. Furthermore, the results obtained from the optical absorption measurements reflected a great dependence on the fundamental absorption edge of the irradiation dose. It was found that the band gap values of the un-irradiated oxides decreased with increasing the MgO molar ratios. Moreover, by increasing the irradiation dose up to 75 kGy, the band gap of irradiated samples decreased with the same behavior of un-irradiated samples. On the other hand, the thermal investigations proved that changing the molar ratios of MgO had an effect on both phase composition and thermal stability of binary oxides. The theoretical investigations were separately studied as a function of the average electronegativity with bond energy calculation.