Tuning the absorption of ultraviolet spectra and optical parameters of aluminum doped PVA based solid polymer composites

In this research work PVA:xAl (0.01 ≤ x ≤ 0.05) based solid polymer composites have been prepared by solution cast technique. The transmittances of the samples are decreased with increasing Al powder concentration. The absorption spectra of the samples are shifted to higher wavelengths which indicate their importance for shielding. The increase of absorption intensity in UV region was observed. The clear shift of absorption edge upon the addition of Al powder content indicated the decrease of energy band gap. The increase of extinction coefficient at high wavelengths for the samples containing Al powder revealed the loss of photon energy. The refractive indexes of the doped samples are increased compared to that of pure PVA. The linear relationship between the refractive index and volume fraction indicates a good dispersion of Al powder in PVA host polymer. The direct optical band gap measured from the plot of (αhυ)² versus photon energy (hυ) showed a decreasing trend with increase of Al content. The Urbach energy was found to increase with increasing aluminum concentration. The complex optical dielectric functions were used to determine the type of electron transition.