Structural, morphological and optical studies of sol-gel engineered Sm3+ activated ZnO thin films for photocatalytic applications
T. Kiran, Hilal Ahmed, Noor Shahina Begum, Karthik Kannan, Devi Radhika
Abstract
Rare earth (RE) ions activated ZnO thin films were prepared via sol-gel route and the thin films be categorized by various techniques. X-ray diffraction (XRD) studies display the hexagonal wurtzite structure of the prepared thin films. Scherrer's formula was utilized to calculate the average crystallite size (25–40 nm) with different Sm3+ concentrations. The optical energy gap was calculated by Diffused Reflectance spectra (DRS). The Acid Red (AR) dye was degraded under ultraviolet (UV) light irradiation with ZnO: Sm3+(1-9 mol %) nanostructured thin films and the highest photodegradation (95 %) was observed for 7 mol % of Sm3+ doped ZnO catalyst. All the obtained results suggest that prepared material could be a prominent material as photocatalyst.