Role of Fe (Transition Metal) in Tuning the Optical Behavior of SnO2 Nanoparticles

Recently, dilute magnetic semiconductors (DMS) are being utilized due to their ability to tailor the physical characteristics of host material by adding a fraction of dopant ions. Such materials have diverse field of applications especially in the area of spintronics as well as optoelectronics. The oxygen deficiency in doped SnO2 serves as favorable condition to be used as transparent conducting oxide (TCO). Here, the structural and optical study of pristine and iron incorporated SnO2 with varying doping concentration synthesized via chemical co-precipitation technique has been carried out. The investigation of different properties of the prepared samples has been performed via X-ray diffraction (XRD) technique and UV -Vis spectroscopic technique to confirm the single phase nature and to determine various structural parameters and band-gap. The Reitveld refinement of XRD patterns confirms that all samples exhibits rutile tetragonal phase structure with no indication of additional phase formation and the crystallite sizes were obtained in the range 7–10nm. The samples display wide absorbance for the ultraviolet region and shows tunable optical band gaps with change in doping level.