PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF ZNO DOPED DIDYMIUM NANO POWDER SAMPLES

In the recent years, much attention has been focused on wide band gap semiconductors materials because of their excellent potential for blue light emitting devices, short-wavelength laser diodes and detectors in UV-blue spectral region. The wide band gap ZnO is gaining much importance for the possible application due to the capability of ultraviolet lasing at room temperature and possibilities to engineer the band gap for further use. In order to attain the potential offered by ZnO, both high-quality n-and p-type ZnO are essential. In this work we synthese the ZnO nanopowder by Sol–gel method & after that the ZnO is doped with rare earth material didymium. Didymium is a naturally occurring element with major constituent Nd and Pr and is used in many applications. The FTIR, SEM and EDX characterization techniques are applied to study the sample & it has been found that the formation of pure phase of ZnO having wurtzite hexagonal structure occurs at 1%, But at higher concentration of Di (3%, 5%) the system shows mixed phase. Moreover SEM shows that the Di doped ZnO has well ordered morphology, has low aggregation and homogeneous distribution of particle size. Note that the synthesized system is also having band gap of 3.24 eV which is comparable with the standard value.