Morphostructural studies of pure and mixed metal oxide nanoparticles of Cu with Ni and Zn

Md Jasim Uddin; Mst Sarmina Yeasmin; Ali Ahsan Muzahid; Md Mahmudur Rahman; G M Masud Rana; Tahmina Akter Chowdhury; Md Al-Amin; Md Kazi Wakib; Sayeda Halima Begum

doi:10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e30544

Morphostructural studies of pure and mixed metal oxide nanoparticles of Cu with Ni and Zn

Heliyon. 2024 May 1;10(9):e30544. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e30544. eCollection 2024 May 15.

Authors

Md Jasim Uddin^{1

2}, Mst Sarmina Yeasmin¹, Ali Ahsan Muzahid¹, Md Mahmudur Rahman¹, G M Masud Rana¹, Tahmina Akter Chowdhury¹, Md Al-Amin¹, Md Kazi Wakib², Sayeda Halima Begum²

Affiliations

¹ Bangladesh Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (BCSIR), Rajshahi Laboratories, Rajshahi, 6206, Bangladesh.
² Department of Chemistry, University of Chittagong, Chittagong, 4331, Bangladesh.

Abstract

Nano-scale interactions between pure metal or metal-oxide components within an oxide matrix can improve functional performance over basic metal oxides. This study reports on the synthesis of monometallic (CuO), bimetallic (CuO-NiO) and trimetallic (CuO-NiO-ZnO) oxide nanoparticles (NPs) via the co-precipitation method and investigation of morphostructural properties. All of the synthesized metal oxide NPs were calcined at 550 °C temperature and annealed under vacuum. In this work, we applied Scherrer formula, modified Scherrer equation, Williamson-Hall plots, and Halder-Wagner plots to calculate the average crystallite size. The XRD data analysis showed that average crystallite sizes of the as-synthesized metal oxide phases were between 4 nm and 76 nm and average diameters calculated from SEM image were between 15 nm and 83 nm. The XRD studies also disclosed that average crystallite size and lattice microstrain of the CuO phases remain almost same (43 nm-46 nm and $2.074 \times 10^{- 3}$ to $2.665 \times 10^{- 3}$ ) for pure CuO and mixed CuO-NiO; but in case of mixed CuO-NiO-ZnO it is found to decrease in size to 11 nm where lattice microstrain increases to $9.653 \times 10^{- 3}$ . Line broadening of diffraction peaks from microstrain contribution was between 0.02 and 0.01. Degree of crystallinity (%) of CuO phases found to decrease from 81 to 71. Dislocation density of CuO phases found to increase from $6.63 \times 10^{- 4} {n m}^{- 2}$ to $12.68 \times 10^{- 3} {n m}^{- 2}$ . X-ray density of CuO phases increased from 6.48 to 6.53 g/cm³. Where this calculated small dislocation density well agreed with the high crystallinity. Crystal structure and specific surface area were determined from lattice constants and X-ray density. These synthesized nanopowders showed the existence of monoclinic, cubic, and hexagonal phases. The obtained NPs of multi-metal oxide explained more than one phases with different size, shape, and morphology at nano scale.

Keywords: Characterization; CuO; CuO–NiO; CuO–NiO–ZnO nanoparticles; Morphostructural properties.