Impact on bandgap, electrical and magnetic properties of SnO2 nanoparticles by cerium and samarium

Synthesis of undoped, Samarium (Sm) and Cerium (Ce) co-doped SnO2 nanoparticles along with their enhancement in structural and physicochemical properties are reported. The samples have been prepared by coprecipitation method. The tetragonal rutile-type structure from PXRD pattern confirms the synthesized materials and obtained an average crystallite size of 23, 19 and 14 nm for the pure, 2 and 4 wt.% of Sm-Ce co-doped SnO2 NPs. The band at 620 cm-1 is assigned to the bonding of metal-oxygen as O-Sn-O bridging bond of SnO2 through FTIR-spectrum. From UV-DRS analysis, bandgap energy is found to be 3.45, 3.38 and 3.26 eV respectively for pure, 2 & 4 wt.% of Sm-Ce co-doped SnO2 NPs. Photoluminescence emission shows a sharp peak centered at 490 nm, a high intensity peaks at 521 and 538 nm due to blue and green emission. Addition of dopants narrowing the bandgap and reduces the dielectric constant as well as the dielectric loss. The dielectric constant and dielectric loss are directly proportional to temperature but inversely proportional to frequency, which shows that both polarizability and the method of charge transfer are impacted by the space charge polarization, which made the material could be a potential candidate in spintronics and high-performance dielectric materials. The effect of Sm-Ce co-dopants enhances the saturation magnetization value from 0.0049067 emu/g to 0.0072245 emu/g. The results exhibit that Sm-Ce (4 wt.%) co-doped SnO2 nanoparticles have strong dielectric and magnetic properties which is a potential candidate for spintronic devices.