Nanofabrication of (Cr2O3)x (NiO)1-x and the impact of precursor concentrations on nanoparticles conduct

Abstract This study aims to synthesize the (Cr2O3)x (NiO)1-x nanoparticles at lower and higher precursor values using the calcination method. There is a lack in regard to investigating the lower and higher precursor values on structural and optical properties of the (Cr2O3)x (NiO)1-x nanoparticles. To synthesize the (Cr2O3)x (NiO)1-x nanoparticles, Cr (III) acetate hydrate and Ni (II) acetate tetrahydrate were reacted with poly (vinyl alcohol). Several techniques, including X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), have been employed to characterize the synthesized sample. The XRD pattern analysis indicated that, following calcination, nanoparticle formation occurred, indicating hexagonal crystalline structures (HCP) and face-centred cubic (FCC) of (Cr2O3)x (NiO)1-x nanoparticles. FT-IR verified the existence of Ni–O and Cr–O as the original compounds of ready (Cr2O3)x (NiO)1-x nanoparticle samples. In term of average particle size, this varied from 5 to 16 nm when the precursor concentration rised from x = 0.20 to x = 0.80, as reflected in the TEM results. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) was employed to measure the valence state and surface composition of the prepared product nanoparticles. To identify the optical band gap using the Kubelka–Munk equation, diffuse UV–visible reflectance spectra were employed, which revealed that the energy band gap fell with a rise in the value of x. In addition, photoluminescence (PL) spectra indicated that the photoluminescence intensity was related to a directly proportional way to particle size. Hence, the results can be employed with a broad range of applications in solar cell energy applications at higher x values and antibacterial activity at lower x values.