Structural and Optical Properties of (MgZnO/rGO) Nanocomposites

Magnesium-zinc oxide/reduced graphene oxide (mgzno/rgo) nanocompositeshave been successfully synthesized by the co-precipitation process .obtainedmaterials were characterized by the x-ray diffraction (xrd) shows both thehexagonal wurtzite structure of zno crystal planes and cubic structure of mgo.this fact shows that the prepared samples are not a single phase but a composite.peak broadening indicates that the smaller crystallites size of the preparedmgzno/rgo nanocomposites .the structural morphology was studied by fieldemission scanning electron microscope (fesem) shows that the nanoparticles areconnected with each other to form agglomerated granular structure which may bedue to the high surface to volume ratio that results in high surface energy and theelemental analysis is confirmed by energy dispersive x-ray analysis (edax)shows four strong peaks correspond to carbon (c), oxygen (o), zinc (zn) andmagnesium(mg) with different weight percentages by doping mg at differentcompositions. the functional groups of the samples are confirmed by the fouriertransforminfrared spectroscopy (ftir) observed in the spectra at nearly ~3685due to the o-h stretching vibrations, peaks observed at ~2860 due to the c-hstretching vibrations,1596-1545 due to the c=o stretching vibrations. the strongbands located at 746 and 530 cm^−1 indicate the stretching vibration mode of mg–o and zn–o, respectively, which confirm the formation of mgzno/rgo nanocomposites. the optical properties of the prepared mgzno/rgo samples arecharacterized by the uv-visible absorption to determine the band gap of the metaloxide nanocomposites. it can be seen in all the spectra that the strong absorptionpeaks were appeared at around 350 nm, which is attributed to the band gapabsorption in mgzno nanocomposites. the calculated values of the band gapenergies of mgzno nanocomposites are 3.47, 3.48 and 3.51ev respectively, atwavelengths 357nm, 356nm and 352nm which are good agreement with reportedband gap values of mgzno nanocomposites. most studies have been concentratedon thin films; synthesis and study of mgzno nanocomposites are rare.mgzno/rgo nanocomposites are mainly applicable in various electrical,optoelectronic and photo catalytic applications. in the present study, mg-dopedzno/rgo with different mg compositions was prepared by co-precipitationmethod with subsequent calcination at high temperature .crystalline structure,morphology and optical properties were investigated and discussed according tothe experimental results.