Synthesis and Characterization CuO-ZnO Binary Nanoparticles

In this work, a simple and low cost modified hydrothermal method was used to prepare CuO-ZnO nanostructures. The innovation of this work is to modify hydrothermal method by flowing nitrogen gas during the reaction. Structural, morphological, optical, and chemical species of grown crystals were studied using the techniques of X-ray diffraction (XRD), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), high-resolution transmission electron microscopy HRTEM, x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), UV/Vis spectroscopy and photoluminescence (PL). Specifically, XRD analysis shows that the sample has hexagonal structure with no phases of impurity indicating the Zn ions have been effectively integrated into the standard CuO crystal structure. The parameters of the lattice, the length of the unit cell and the crystallite size were determined from the XRD pattern of the CuO-ZnO sample and it was noticed that the crystallite size ranged from 17 nm to 26 nm. The SEM micrographs of the sample CuO-ZnO revealed that the prepared sample exhibited nanorods-like structure. The XPS spectrum proved the presence of Cu+2 and Zn+2 elemental forms. It is also observed that the XPS spectrum was free from other peaks related to impurities which indicating that the prepared sample was pure. The optical characterization recorded that the energy gap was around 2.51 eV while PL spectrum showed blue and red orange emissions originated from CuOZnO nanostructures.