A Comparative Wet Chemical Synthesis of Zinc Oxide and Tin Oxide Nanoparticles: Structural and Optical Properties

Comparative studies for monodispersed colloidal Zinc oxide (ZnO) and Tin oxide (SnO2) nanoparticles were carried out to understand the controlling factor to enhance functional properties with respect to surface-volume ratio at moderate temperature. Cost-effective wet chemical synthesis was undertaken for studying the structural and surface morphology after calcination at 1000 degrees C. The resulting nanopowder showed that nanoblock tends to orient itself into structural framework via self-assembly into Wurizite hexagonal phase and tetragonal shape to ZnO and SnO2 respectively which depends with the ionization potential and electronegativity of the metal ion along with type of single source molecular precursor used, temperature and nature of solvent. The average particle size was calculated by Debye-Scherrer equation and found to be 41 nm and 20 nm for ZnO and SnO2, respectively with their narrow size distribution. It was observed that functional properties depend with growth rate during nucleation. The self assembly plays a crucial role for better understanding nanostructure framework with use of two different metal ion for efficient functional properties based on properties-structure relationship.