Structural, optical and photocatalytic properties of Fe and (Co, Fe) co-doped copper oxide spin coated films

A M El Sayed; Mohamed Shaban

doi:10.1016/j.saa.2015.05.010

Structural, optical and photocatalytic properties of Fe and (Co, Fe) co-doped copper oxide spin coated films

Spectrochim Acta A Mol Biomol Spectrosc. 2015 Oct 5:149:638-46. doi: 10.1016/j.saa.2015.05.010. Epub 2015 May 7.

Authors

A M El Sayed¹, Mohamed Shaban²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, Fayoum University, Fayoum 63514, Egypt. Electronic address: ams06@fayoum.edu.eg.
² Nanophotonics and Applications (NPA) Lab, Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, Beni-Suef University, Beni-Suef 62514, Egypt.

PMID: 25985128
DOI: 10.1016/j.saa.2015.05.010

Abstract

Copper oxide films with composition Cu1-x-yFexCoyO (where x⩽0.06 and y⩽0.03 in a molar ratio) and thickness of about 2 μm were spin coated onto ultrasonically cleaned glass substrates. These films were annealed at 500 °C in the air. XRD results show that films are CuO of polycrystalline and monoclinic structures without the detection of any Fe or Co traces. The average crystallite size of pure CuO is 20.44 nm reduced to 18.72 nm after Fe doping, then increased to 26.82 nm due to the co-doping with Co atoms. The optical band gap blue-shifted from 2.15 eV to 2.3 eV followed by red-shift to 2.15 eV after the Co incorporation. The influence of Fe doping and Co co-doping on the optical constants of CuO films as well as the photocatalytic removal of methylene blue (MB) dye is reported. The correlations between the structural modifications and the resultant optical properties are discussed. The obtained results of the fabricated system are compared with those of similar materials.

Keywords: Band gap tuning; Co-doping; CuO; Dye removal; Nanostructured films; Optical constants.