Shaveta Thakur, Neha Sharma, Anamika Varkia and Jitender Kumar
Un-doped ZnO-NPs and Zn1-xCuxO NPs (x=0.01, 0.02, 0.03, 0.04) were synthesized using hydrothermal method and characterized by powder XRD. The effect of concentration of the precursors, on the structure, grain size and band gap energy were investigated. The XRD analysis demonstrates that the nanoparticles have the hexagonal wurtzite structure and the particle size decreases with increasing concentration of copper. From the results, the average crystallite sizes of the Zn1-xCuxO NPs obtained from the different methods were very different, implying that the inclusion of strain in various forms has an important effect. Investigating the plots, it appears that the result of the SSP model and was more accurate than that of the Scherrer method, as the strain was considered in the calculation of crystalline size and the data were fitted more accurately in this method. SSP method was used to study the individual contributions of crystallite size and lattice strain on the peak broadening of Cu doped ZnO nanoparticles. Optical studies indicated that the band gap decreased from 3.38 eV to 3.35 eV upon Cu doping at temperature 500oC
