Sol-gel synthesis, optical and structural characterization of ZrOS nanopowder

In this paper, we report the synthesis of tetragonal zirconium oxysulfide t-ZrOS nanopowder by the sol-gel method using water solution of a precursor containing thiourea [CS(NH2)(2)] and zirconium in the form of an anionic oxalate complex [Zr(C2O4)](4-). The tetragonal t-ZrOS structure with space group P4/nmm revealed by X-ray patterns showed preferred orientation along (101) plane. For surface morphology, compositional and optical absorption studies, scanning electron microscopy, energy dispersive X-ray and ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy were employed for characterization of the powder respectively. A nearly constant value of the refractive index at higher wavelength lambda a parts per thousand yen 1,100 nm was found to be 2.19. High indirect and direct optical band gap of similar to 2.0 and 2.50 eV with absorbance < 40 % were obtained for the powder.