Effect of pH on properties of ZnO nanoparticles

We here report synthesis of ZnO nanoparticles using cost effective and low temperature sol-gel method to investigate the effect of pH on structural and optical properties. Zinc acetate is used as precursor. X-Ray powder Diffraction and Spectroscopic Ellipsometer are used to study the crystal structure and optical properties of the nanoparticles, respectively. Presence of (100), (002) and (101) planes in the XRD graphs strongly indicates the formation of wurtzite ZnO. The nanoparticles prepared using pH 10 show transmissions of 84% in the visible and infrared region. Band gap of the nanoparticles increases with increase in pH from 3.34 to 3.38eV. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd.