A significant effect of Ce-doping on key characteristics of NiO thin films for optoelectronics facilely fabricated by spin coater

NiO has been found to have excellent physical properties which are crucial for several significant electro-optical devices. Herein, we have designed and fabricated high-quality films of NiO with various concentrations of Ce and studied their key properties. X-ray diffraction (XRD) study confirmed the cubic phase, good crystallinity and growth direction along (111) plane in the prepared samples. The crystallite size was noticed in the range of 13-30 nm. For confirming the presence of Ce doping and its homogeneity in NiO films the EDX/SEM mapping was carried out. AFM study provided the topographic information in terms of size of the grains and roughness of all films. The grown films were found to be 70-80% optically transparent in the whole testing region. Optical energy gap was found to expand from 3.60 to 3.68 eV owing to Ce-doping. The refractive index value was noticed to be in the range from 1.7 to 2.7. The n(2) and chi((3)) values for pure and Ce-doped NiO films varied from 2 x 10(-10) to 1.4 x 10(-11) and 1 x 10(-12) to 1.1 x 10(-11) esu, respectively. Obtained results indicated that Ce has strong influence on opto-nonlinear characteristics of NiO films and proposed their application in the opto-nonlinear devices.