Structural, optical and electrical characterization of antimony-substituted tin oxide nanoparticles
Introduction
Nanoscience and its applications have generated great interest in recent years. Side by side there is an urgent need for developing reliable synthesis methods to obtain nanoparticles with well-controlled physical properties such as optical, catalytic and electric, which strongly depend on particle size, surface states, shape and agglomeration. Tin oxide nanoparticles find applications in the field of optoelectronics [1], [2], [3], catalysis [4], gas sensors [5], [6] and radioactive waste management [7]. The antimony-doped tin oxide (ATO) is a well-known transparent conductor and widely used in solar cell applications [8] and heat-reflection coating [9], [10].
The properties of tin oxide powder are affected by the preparation process. The ultimate goal consists in the preparation of nanopowders with controlled particle size and good monodispersity in order to obtain high-performance materials. So far, ATO powder has been synthesized by sol–gel [11], hydrothermal [12], co-precipitation [13], mechanochemical [14], combustion route [15], laser ablation [16], microemulsions [17] and screen printing [18] techniques.
Antimony is one of the most common n-type dopant for SnO2; thus addition of Sb modifies the band structure of SnO2 [19]. The donation of the extra electron into the conduction band upon substitutional replacement of a cation was done by the impurity dopant. Band structure of Sb-doped SnO2 showed the formation of an Sb-5s-like band in the SnO2 band gap with a free-electron-like character at the Γ-point. Moreover, it was concluded that this band could be a half filled metallic band and that additional thermal excitation into the Sn-like bands could increase the conductivity.
In this work, we have chosen the simple chemical precipitation method, which presents the following major advantages, compared to previous methods, such as high purity, small crystalline size, short preparation time and low cost. In earlier works, although synthesis of antimony-doped tin oxide nanoparticles by the precipitation technique has been reported, competition between antimony ions (Sb3+ and Sb5+) with different doping concentration of antimony (up to 15 wt%) has not been reported [25], [30]. Here we have presented the detail discussion of the ionic state of antimony ions with different doping concentrations of antimony with the help of XPS analysis. Finally, we correlate these results with lattice parameter and electrical resistance results.
Section snippets
Experimental procedure
An appropriate amount of SbCl3 was dissolved in 5 ml of fuming HCl (37%) and this clear solution was added dropwise into 0.1 mol SnCl2.2H2O (98%, Merck chemicals) of solution using water as solvent. The total solution was stirred for 30 min and the aqueous phase ammonia (25%) was added dropwise until the pH of the solution adjusted to 4. Within a few seconds a white gelatinous precipitate was obtained. It was washed with water and ethanol more than 10 times until no chlorine ions were detected by
Results and Discussion
Fig. 1 shows the percentage of weight loss of ATO powder. The weight loss had been increased according to the sintering temperature. The weight loss below 270 °C was attributed to elimination of ammonia and chemically bonded water molecules [4]. The percentage of weight loss was calculated throughout the experiment and was found to be 9.1%. The slight increase of weight was observed between the temperature 270 and 300 °C, which was due to the oxidation process [20]. The oxidation of SnO into SnO2
Conclusion
Well-crystalline undoped and antimony-doped SnO2 nanoparticles ranging from 30 to 11 nm were obtained by chemical precipitation from starting solution of SnCl2 and SbCl3. The nanostructured antimony-doped powders were characterized by XRD, SEM, TEM, EDS, FTIR, XPS and electrical resistance measurements. The crystalline phase purity and the composition of SnO2-doped powder were studied. It was proven that all antimony entered the SnO2 host lattice and substituted for Sn4+ mainly with Sb5+ at low
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