Impact of CuO doping on the properties of CdO thin films on the catalytic degradation by using pulsed-Laser deposition technique

This study is an attempt to present a novel idea for enhancing the properties of the CdO thin film onto the quartz substrate by doping CuO on the catalytic activity for degradation of 4-nitrophenol. In this work, the CuO doped CdO thin film is carried by switching of targets between Cd and Cu by Pulsed Laser Deposition (PLD) Technique via nanosecond Nd:YAG laser to enhance the performance of the as-prepared CdO thin film, which are performed by various spectroscopic techniques. From X-ray diffraction, the crystallinity of CdO thin film was improved in the case of doping with CuO due to the grain growth by increasing the intensity of the diffraction peaks at (111) and decreasing the intensity of the diffraction peaks at (200) with slightly shifted toward higher value. From UV-visible spectroscopy, the maximum value of transmittance in the visible region of CdO was decreased after doping with CuO due to a less scattering property and high structural homogeneity. From photoluminescence, the emission intensity decreases related to the presence of impurities of CuO ions. From Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, the stretching vibration modes are based on CdO and CuO structure. The scanning electron microscope showed a semi-spherical shape of CdO structure with some irregular shape nanoparticles related to CuO structure. After that, the catalytic activity for degradation of 4-nitrophenol of the CdO thin film is improved after doping with CuO from 0% to 92.3% within 2 h.