Bismuth-Doped ZnO Nanosheet using Co-precipication

Sermsrithong, C., Jaidaew, P., Promjantuk, C., Buabthong, P., "Structural and Optical Properties of Bismuth-Doped ZnO Nanoparticles Synthesized by Co-precipitation." International Journal of Engineering, Transaction C: Aspects, (2022). DOI: 10.5829/IJE.2022.35.12C.10

tl;dr

• ZnO nanoparticles have been used in various application due to their large band-gap and high catalytic activity.
• These ZnO nanoparticles, when made into nano-sheets, have been reported to show high catalytic activity (mostly because of higher surface area)
• In addition to activity, a good absorption is also needed to make an efficient 'photo'-catalyst; doping ZnO with bismuth changes its optical absorption properties.
• In this work, we made ZnO nano-sheets using co-precipitation, a very simple and straight-forward technique that doesn't require any extensive laboratory setup.
• The nanoparticles were also doped with bismuth by introducing Bi precursor during the precipitation process.
• We performed a set of standard characterization processes (XRD, SEM, UV-Vis) and discusses how the specific deposition conditions we used led to nano-sheet formation

Comments

• When doping a semiconductor, don't confuse the dopant's effect on the band-gap and the conductivity type.
• The effect of dopants in the lattice is predominantly the change in Fermi level (i.e., changing from n-type to p-type). Sometimes, the band gap may change (as observed in this work), but it's due to the shrinkage effect rather than the dopants being donors/acceptors of electrons.