The structural and optical properties of Al and Mg doped ZnO synthesized by solid state reaction method

Abstract

In this study, the structural and optical properties of Al and Mg doped zinc oxide Zn0.98M0.02O (M= Al, Mg) prepared by solid state reaction method is investigated. X-ray diffraction (XRD), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), UV-Visible spectroscopy (UV–Vis) and Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy were employed to study the structural and optical properties. With XRD analysis, it was revealed that all the samples are hexagonal wurtzite structure and exhibit no impurity phases. The reflectance spectra was used to determine the optical band gap of the samples. And it was found that undoped ZnO sample has an energy band gap of 3.16 eV which increases with Al and Mg doping, probably driven by the decrease in the lattice parameters. The structural bond vibrations of undoped and doped ZnO were analysed by FTIR spectroscopy, and it was seen that the broad absorption band is at approximately 550 cm-1 for all the samples, which corresponds to the stretching vibration of Zn–O bond.