Morphological, structural and optical dispersion parameters of Cd-doped NiO nanostructure thin film

Cadmium doped nickel oxide with different dopants concentrations (0, 1, 5, 10%, 20, 30 and 40%) were deposited on highly cleaned glass substrates using sol gel/spin coating technique. The effect of cadmium doping on structural, morphologies and optical parameters have been studied in details. The XRD lines of the deposited Cd:NiO was enhanced with increasing cadmium doping content due to the improvement of the films crystallinity. The optical properties and the morphologies study of the deposited nanoparticles thin films have been discussed in this work. It was shown that the average of the crystalline size of the deposited thin films was calculated using Debye Scherrer formula and found in the range between 15 and 10 nm also agreed with the size values which was extracted from SEM images. Optical parameters i.e. absorbance (A), transmittance (T), refractive index (n) were measured and calculated. Band gap energy is considered one of the most important optical parameter, therefore measured and found ranging between 2.95 and 3.30 eV. The real and imaginary part of the dielectric constant and optical conductivity of these deposited thin films were reported. Cd:NiO can be applied in different electronic and optoelectronic applications due to its high band gap and high transparency. (C) 2016 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.