Publication: Towards control of the size, composition and surface area of NiO nanostructures by Sn doping
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Publication Date
2021-02
Authors
Li, Shaohui
Lee, Pooi See
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MDPI
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Abstract
Achieving nanostructures with high surface area is one of the most challenging tasks as this metric usually plays a key role in technological applications, such as energy storage, gas sensing or photocatalysis, fields in which NiO is gaining increasing attention recently. Furthermore, the advent of modern NiO-based devices can take advantage of a deeper knowledge of the doping process in NiO, and the fabrication of p-n heterojunctions. By controlling experimental conditions such as dopant concentration, reaction time, temperature or pH, NiO morphology and doping mechanisms can be modulated. In this work, undoped and Sn doped nanoparticles and NiO/SnO_2 nanostructures with high surface areas were obtained as a result of Sn incorporation. We demonstrate that Sn incorporation leads to the formation of nanosticks morphology, not previously observed for undoped NiO, promoting p-n heterostructures. Consequently, a surface area value around 340 m^2/g was obtained for NiO nanoparticles with 4.7 at.% of Sn, which is nearly nine times higher than that of undoped NiO. The presence of Sn with different oxidation states and variable Ni^(3+)/Ni^(2+) ratio as a function of the Sn content were also verified by XPS, suggesting a combination of two charge compensation mechanisms (electronic and ionic) for the substitution of Ni^(2+) by Sn^(4+). These results make Sn doped NiO nanostructures a potential candidate for a high number of technological applications, in which implementations can be achieved in the form of NiO-SnO_2 p-n heterostructures.
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© 2021 by the authors.Licensee MDPI
This research was funded by FEDER/M-ERA.Net Cofund projects: RTI2018-097195-B-I00 and PCIN-2017-106.