SYNTHESIS CHARACTERIZATION AND APPLICATIONS OF RARE EARTH METAL LOADED COPPER OXIDE NANOPARTICLES

Abstract

ABSTRACT newlineNanomaterials have characteristic physical and chemical properties distinctive newlinefrom those of a bulk matter with same chemical composition. The oxides of transition newlinemetals belong to an important class of semiconductors which also find significant newlinescientific and industrial applications in magnetic storage media, solar energy newlinetransformation, electronics and catalysis. Among the various transition metal oxides, newlineCuO is of main interest in nanostructures due to their remarkable physical and chemical newlineproperties as well as extensive variety of applications. The physical and chemical newlineproperties of CuO nanoparticles can be modified by doping with metals. The lanthanide newlinemetals have gained huge attention due to their unique optical characteristics, especially newlineas a fluorophore in a variety of biological applications. In this thesis, studies on the novel newlineapproach for the synthesis of rare earth metal loaded CuO nanoparticles (NPs) and their newlineapplications are mainly focused. newlineCuO NPs are loaded with Lanthanum (La), Cerium (Ce) and Erbium (Er). All the newlinesamples were synthesized by precipitation thermal decomposition method and newlinecharacterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), field emission scanning electron microscopy newline(FE-SEM), energy dispersive spectra (EDS), diffuse reflectance spectra (DRS), newlinephotoluminescence (PL), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and BET surface area newlineanalysis. The rare earth metal loaded CuO NPs were found to have monoclinic structure newlineand crystalline size of loaded CuO NPs was smaller (16-19 nm) than that of bare CuO newlineNPs (25 nm). FESEM analysis illustrated the rare earth metal loaded-CuO samples to be newlinespherical in shape with slight agglomeration. EDX analysis revealed the presence of newlineelements including the rare earth metal in the CuO NPs. The diffuse reflectance spectra newlineof loaded CuO NPs exhibited an increased absorption when compared to bare CuO newlineNPs. The PL intensity of the rare earth loaded CuO NPs is less than that of the CuO newlineNPs. This is due to the suppression of recombination of the photo generated