Study of Thin films of Nickel Oxide (NiO) Deposited by the Pyrolysis Spray Method

In this work, thin films of nickel oxide (NiO) were deposited by a simple and inexpensive technique, which is spray pyrolysis on ordinary glass substrates heated to a fixed temperature of 500 ° C, from a solution containing nickel nitrate hexahydrate as a precursor dissolved in water with deferent values of concentrations.Nickel oxide (NiO) is an interesting material because of its chemical stability [1] , it is a p-type conductivity semiconductor [2], energy bandgap value between 3.6 and 4.0 eV[3] and easy to deposit in thin layers many techniques, such as sol-gel and spray pyrolysis .The NiO thin films obtained were characterized to determine the structure with X-ray diffraction technique (XRD), the absorption domain (UV-Visible Spectroscopy), and the surface morphology (SEM).The X-ray diffraction patterns confirm the presence of NiO phase with preferential orientation along the (111) direction. The optical gap (band gap) for nickel oxide calculated from the measurement of optical absorption is 3.6 eV, which is quite comparable to the value of the ratio.