Copper Doped Zinc Oxide Nanocrystalline Thin Film: Growth, Characterization, Effect of annealing on Photocatalytic activity and electrical properties of irradiated film

TL;DR

This study investigates how copper doping and annealing influence the optical, structural, and photocatalytic properties of zinc oxide thin films, aiming to enhance their performance in pollutant degradation under UV light.

Contribution

It provides new insights into the effects of copper doping and annealing on zinc oxide thin films' photocatalytic efficiency and optical properties, using sol-gel spin coating.

Findings

Copper doping increases transmittance in visible range.

Annealing improves photocatalytic degradation of pollutants.

Doped films show enhanced optical transparency and photocatalytic activity.

Abstract

The problem of detecting the ability of some metal oxides as photocatalysts is receiving considerable attention in the world. The studied zinc oxide is considered as one of the most utilized semiconductors, due to its direct band gap of 3.37 eV and a large exciton binding energy of 60 meV at room temperature. The characteristic formulation of Copper doped zinc oxide is implemented to obtain an improved adsorption kinetics and photocatalytic activity of zinc oxide photocatalyst capable of evolving estimated photoluminescence (PL) spectra of zinc oxide nanoparticles to explore the effect of Copper doping and annealing temperature on its optical properties. using Solgel spin coating technique, Zinc oxide and copper doped zinc oxide thin films were deposited on borosilicate substrate and all films was annealed at 500 C for 5- hours. Optical properties of the films have been studied using spectrophotometer in the wavelength range 300-800nm and structure of zinc oxide films is investigated and included reported, also the effect of the doping concentration of Copper. Further the characteristic formulation to treat the photocatalytic performance of pure zinc oxide and Copper Doped zinc oxide samples were investigated through the degradation of Malachite Green (MG), as a model of organic pollutants, under UV light irradiation. Mainly, these films exhibited a good transparency in the visible region. It was observed that when the doping concentration increased, the transmittance also increased. irradiation for different times.