Synthesis and characterization of pure and doped ZnO nanoparticles

In this work, a direct precipitation method using wet chemical reaction was used to synthesize pure and doped ZnO nanoparticles. The zinc nitrate and sodium hydroxide were used as staring materials to precipitate the desired nanoparticles followed by calcinations at temperatures of 500-700 °C. The phase purity and crystallite size of as grown particles were characterized via X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy. The X-ray diffraction results indicated that the synthesized ZnO powders had a pure single phase wurtzite structure and the average particle sizes were about 40 nm. The dopant elements Co and Cu influenced the particle size of the powders. The formation of single phase ZnO powders was also confirmed by nuclear hyperfine method such as perturbed angular correlation spectroscopy which revealed the incorporation of dopants at the substitutional zinc sites in ZnO lattice.