Effect of carbon nanotubes/graphene nanoplates hybrid to ZnO matrix: production, electrical and optical properties of nanocomposite

Electrical and optical properties of pure andcarbon nanotube (CNT)/graphene nanoplate (GNP) mixture-reinforced zinc oxide (ZnO)matrix at different temperatures were investigated. UV-Vis absorption andelectrical conductivity measurements were used in order to determine theproperties were mentioned above. Samples were divided two main groups based ontheir matrix: one of them commercially acquired ZnO and the other one wasproduced via sol-gel method. Both groups have the same four sub-groupsaccording to the percentage of the weight of the reinforcing. SEM imagesindicated that commercially obtained ZnO matrix has hexagonal structure whileZnO manufactured by sol-gel was mainly in sphere form. Raman spectroscopy and TEM analyses proved that graphene nanoplate structure was producedsuccessfully, and XRD characterization shows that ZnO was produced in asuitable way by sol-gel method. The results indicated that electricalconductivity of the samples which from pure to 0.4% reinforced was decreasedwith increasing in reinforcing percentage. However, samples with 0.8% CNT/GNPmixture reinforcing showed greatest electrical conductivity. The highest reflectionpercentages of the samples were obtained from the pure specimens while thelowest ratios were observed in the highest reinforced samples. Activationenergy and optical band gap values were calculated according to electrical andoptical graphs.