The influence of annealing temperature on structural properties of zinc oxide nanoparticles synthesized by precipitation method

Abstract

In the present work, the precipitation method was used to prepare zinc oxide nanoparticles in the presence of zinc nitrate and potassium hydroxide as zinc precursor and hydroxide precursor, respectively. The influence of annealing temperature on the structural, morphological, and vibrational properties of zinc oxide nanoparticles was studied by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), Fourier transform Raman spectroscopy (FT-Raman), and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) techniques. The effects of annealing temperature on the crystallite size of zinc oxide nanoparticles were investigated. The XRD results represented that the zinc oxide nanoparticles exhibited high crystallinity of hexagonal wurtzite crystal structure. The average crystallite size of nanoparticles increased from 25 nm to 31 nm with an increase in annealing temperature from 600°C to 800°C. The SEM images showed that the prepared zinc oxide nanoparticles in this present work were spherical in shape and had the larger size with increasing annealing temperature. FT-Raman and FT-IR spectra confirmed that the quality of Zn-O vibrational mode was stronger at higher annealing temperature.